I cannot remember a time when you could purchase a new car in Illinois on a Sunday, but my husband and his friend seem to remember it being a relatively new law. When did it start?
Incidently, I found that Illinois allows local communities to make their own laws regarding car sales, but I still don’t recall seeing a dealership open on Sunday.
What’s the scoop?
It was instituted in 1982.
Thanks! Where did you find that? I googled my brains out and couldn’t find a start date.
That’s what I was finding as well. Okay so now I’m really confused.
I’m going to go with samclem here. I think the focus of the Wki article is different. I distinctly remember being an adult (more or less) of car buying age when the law was changed - specifically for car dealers , and 1982 makes me 22 at the time.
IIRC, it had something to do with allowing car salesmen and dealers to have a day off to spend with their families, because I don’t know - they’re a special breed of store/retailer and need their nap time. I know it made it damn inconvenient to shop for cars on a weekend, because the only day you have is Saturday.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/columnists/chi-0703060243mar06,0,6131740.column
Registration needed for that site.
When I was growing up, “Never on Sundays!” was a common bit in car dealers’ advertising. And this was well before 1982, in Cook County.
So… Were car dealers in other counties looking forlornly at their Cook County counterparts lazing around on Sundays and thought “Hey, we want the day off too!”?
What actually happened, occurred on more than one occasion. I’m getting most of my info by using my newspaper database at Newspaperarchive.
Evidently you could sell cars on Sunday in Illinois for some period prior to 1961. That year, the state legislature tried to implement a law prohibiting Sunday auto sales. The State Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional as “class legislation.” That was, perhaps, under the “old” Constitution of Illinois.
In 1982, the legislature again passed a law prohibiting Sunday sales of automobiles. It was to take effect on 1 Jan. 1983. The new law was challenged. I think it went all the way to the SCOTUS. And I think the SCOTUS refused to hear it.
Most car dealers were for the law, mainly because it would reduce their costs. But saying that it gives their employees a day of rest was always the politic thing to say publically.
I don’t recall 1961 - something about being a year old. Thanks samclemn for doing the research, as I read, I remembered the court fight after the 1982 law was passed.
I never did, and still don’t understand the ‘cost-cutting’ aspect of being closed one day of the week. I know the car dealers are a very influential lobby in Illinois though.
If all the other dealerships are also closed on Sundays then they won’t loose any business. But if they all open on Sundays then they aren’t going to get more business. People aren’t going to buy more cars just because they can shop on Sundays, what business they did have would just be spread over 7 days rather than 6.
Traditionally, the only dealers who were open in Northern Illinois on Sunday were the jackals & thieves. None of the honest dealers were ever opened on Sunday anyway.
In those days, you couldn’t access your insurance agent, broker, accountant or other professional who could tell you whether the dealer was telling you the truth about the value of your car.
The Illinois Attorney General’s office was so overwhelmed with calls on Monday & Tuesday that it literately broke the telephone system.
So the law was passed to protect consumers from unsavory car dealers.
So why doesn’t anyone know about this?
Well, for starters, the Chicago Tribune lost around 3/4 of a million dollars in advertising revenue per week as soon as the law was passed.
If you think the media is in the business of telling the truth, you might want to re-think!
(My father had a Dodge dealership in Berwyn and heard this from the guy who sponsored the law.)
You’re gonna need a better cite than that to raise a five-year-old zombie.
Are you sure it wasn’t from the guy’s barber’s brother-in-law? That’s what my dad’s brother’s boss told him. 
My guess would be that it was an anti-competitive measure. The big dealerships lobbied for it because they figured that with less time to shop, buyers would tend to limit their searches to the biggest dealers, rather than the little neighborhood lots.
As long as everyone is throwing out poorly cited reasons, here’s the one I heard.
It’s because the auto mechanics in the dealership service departments were unionized. The car dealers didn’t want to pay the unions overtime for working on Sundays, and they didn’t want to tell customers they’d open for sales on Sunday, but not for service.
Not every dealership in the state was unionized of course, but the union dealerships in the big cities had enough clout to push the law through.
Nope. Dad sold fleets to a lot of government entities…
Dad died in 1996 after being retired since 1993.
The company was Suburban Dodge Sales in Berwyn Illinois
The Illinois attorney general didn’t quash the story, but if you still have faith in the news media, perhaps you need to have your head examined
The Chicago Tribune alone lost 3/4 / million dollars PER WEEK when this law took effect, so naturally they wanted the real reason out and about (not)
I find this hard to accept without a cite.
That is almost $40 million a year. The total revenue for the Tribune company was $410 million; in 2015, after 30 years of inflation. And that includes the Chicago, Los Angeles, & San Diego papers, plus 8 others. I’d really like a cite for this.
Why did you bump this thread 3 1/2 years later, especially when you didn’t add any new information? :rolleyes: