OK, I had never really noticed until this weekend’s car shopping excursion, but it is illegal for car dealerships in the state of Illinois to be open on Sundays. This is nice in some peoples opinion because the dealerships intentionally leave their gates open to allow shoppers to walk the lots unfettered by salesman. It strikes me as very odd, I did some asking the last 2 days at dealers and no one was aware of the motivation behind the law and Illinois is one of supposedly 8 states who have the law.
The only thing I can think of is the relgious angle, but this seems pretty unlikely to me (and if its true its exceedingly retarded). I can grasp, but not agree with, the motivation for outlawing liquor sales on Sundays as well as some other things to promote that Sabbath. What about cars is immoral? No other businesses I’m aware of have their sale of non-perishable goods regulated this way. The more perplexing question, if it is indeed a religous thing, then would be why does Illinois practice this law? Illinois has virtually no laws regarding liquor sales on Sunday (last I oticed liquor sales were forced from 11AM Mon-Sat to Noon on Sunday).
Am I missing something, what other states do this, and why did it come to be?
The result of this action seems to make buying a car a very difficult prospect for full-time workers. To properly shop for a car one should do alot of research, and getting all the paperwork in order frequently takes more than one day. Since car dealerships also run on fairly short hours, this will require most people to take a day off work to actually buy a car. That should really hurt car sales, making people wait until they need a car instead of the occasional whimsical purchase. Are dealers daily hours also regulated? I doubt it since every dealer has different hours, and I’ve heard that the “early close” is a sales tactic to force buyers to commit to a purchase without having time to shop around to other dealers. You’ll visit the dealer closing earliest first to avoid missing it, but most people don’t make it off the first lot or two if they encounter a decent salesman.
So what gives? Must be nice for the dealers on the border of neighboring states.
** BTW, amnyone think this is a Cecil worthy question? **
You’re dealing with a state law. Do a little digging and you may find that auto dealers had something to do with it.
In Texas there is a law allowing a car dealer to open either Saturday or Sunday, but not both days.
Except in El Paso County.
Hey. We had the same thing here is Louisiana until the mid-eightys. Food and gas only. If you went into a grocery store they had ropes around all the stuff you could not buy that day. They were called “blue laws” for some reason. Car lots are closed here on Sundays also, but I thought they just wanted the day off. Maybe there is a law!??
I also thought they wanted to cut down on the numbers of people going buy to “test drive” a car on their day off when they had no intention of buying a car. I used to do this all the time. It was fun and informative to drive more cars than one person could ever purchase.
I read about this somewhere or other. I don’t remember which state it referred to, but the author suggested that there was a less “holy” motivation, at least nowadays. The idea is that it discourages competition - at one point, car dealers all chose to close on Sundays, which was good for them because it was typically their slowest day (this was a while back). Then new, unestablished dealers tried to move in and decided to stay open on Sundays to attract customers away from the old dealers. Rather than also open on Sundays to compete, to old dealers instead lobbied to make it illegal to sell cars on Sundays.
Can’t vouch for it’s veracity, but it’s cynical enough that I like it.
Furthermore, since cars are such a big-ticket item, it’s assumed that only a fixed number will be bought in a given market in a given week. If they allowed each other to open on Sundays, everyone’s working hours would increase by 17% without any increase in sales.
We, too, couldn’t buy much of anything on Sundays until 15-20 years ago. Until quite recently, most shops, malls, etc., did not open until 1pm on Sundays. (Many still run these hours, for that matter.) For the record, liquor stores can’t open on Sundays either, here.
On the other hand, the car dealerships are open until 9pm or so on Saturday, which IME gives you a fair amount of time for shopping. And many car sales staff like the forced closure, because it means that they actually get at least one day a week off. And probably, as sqweels said, because they don’t think they’d make enough sales on Sunday to be financially worthwhile.
These are, indeed, called ‘blue laws’ and they are, indeed, motivated by the perceived need to enforce religious morality upon the godless masses. Although I’m sure that they have been used and abused for secular purposes, as well.
Those who said that economics (and not religion) motivated the Illinois Sunday car dealership law are correct. The dealers actively lobbied in Springfield for the law to save the wage and other costs of expanding their hours.
store hours laws are really dumb (IMHO) and anticompetitive. But if you think a law or two in your state are bad enough, don’t eveer go to Europe. The situation in many European countries is ridiculous because if you have a job you are pretty much working all the hours the stores are open. I remember Germany was quite bad in this respect a few years ago. I do not know if things have improved any since then.
Personaly I see no reason for laws that restrict business hours. I think they are always demanded by the busineses who want to work less and avoid the possible competition.
There may be a law concerning closing on Sunday. But consider this. Most people who buy a car have to finance it. The banks and credit unions are all closed on Sunday. Most people, unless they have less than stellar credit, can usually go into a dealership, make their best deal, and drive away in 1/2 of a day. But if the banks, etc., and the Motor Vehicles dept are closed, they have to wait.
As others have said, the laws are based on religion. You are not supposed to work on Sunday, that is your one day off and you get to worship.
In Texas, the laws changed around 1985. Before that, on Sunday, you could only buy food [and a few other things].
When the laws changed, the car dealerships lobbied and got an exception for them that they were not allowed to open on both Saturday and Sunday [they pick which day to open]. They knew that sales would be slow because banks would be closed, but also knew that if olny a few dealers were open, that those few dealers could make sales.
The industry decided to lobby to prohibit sales because compitition would force all of them to stay open both days, and pay their sales staff.
Good or bad, it’s all politics. Laws are not rational.
With all due respect guys the question isn’t about “blue laws” specifically. I have no doubt they exist and its a GD in the making if we consider the relavence of them. My question is why in Illinois, a state with a tradition of not having blue laws, would cars be singled out. I tried to outline in the OP my rationale for dismissing blue laws as the likely reasoning.
sqweels and Random seem to be on a more likely track. It doesn’t seem to hold up under a little common sense analysis however. The potential prospect that there is essentially a set number of car sales in a region per week, and a day off during the week saves wages with out a appreciable loss of sales is feasible. The problem I see is why choose Sunday? If customer service is the goal, which you’d think it would be since prices from one Ford dealer to another don’t vary that much, they should conform to the customer’s free shopping hours. Dealers could easily close on Monday and Tuesday like many barber shops do, to shorten their work week and still provide longer weekend shopping hours. It makes sense to give the customers the most time to shop and check out the product when you think about large ticket items. Not only does it serve the customer, I think most people get excited about the car and it will grow on them if they take their time with it. Seems like there must be more to it.
my85car said:
Yes, most people can buy a car in a half of a day, but shopping for a car is an entirely different story. Even a narrow search takes much of an afternoon, much less a good thorough search.
I used to have to read automotive trade magazines for one of my clients, and I distinctly remember reading about promotions where dealers in an area would all open up for one Sunday or holiday. So I don’t think it’s a law, at least not anymore.
Don’t forget, if you open the sales department, you pretty much have to open up the parts and service departments, as well, and have support staff for all of it. The salespeople work on commission, but everyone else gets paid by the hour, and the dealers will either have to higher more staff to cover the longer schedule, or pay overtime.
I suppose closing on a Tuesday or something would make more sense, but then you’re operating on different days from the banks, etc.
I think that you may have answered your own question there. As bpaulson alludes to, auto dealers don’t want you to do a good thorough search. They want to sell you a vehicle. If you feel pressured (it’s 20 minutes until the dealership closes, you won’t get another chance to go shopping for a week, the advertised rebate is about to expire, etc.), that’s one more point in favor of whichever dealer you happen to visit.
Far be it from me to suggest that the small community of auto-dealership owners might collude in their self-interest, though.
