In most of Michigan, it is illegal to sell cars on a Sunday

Ask car dealer George Glassman about opening his dealership on a designated day off and it evokes painful memories for him.

It was in the early 1980s when he and some other metro Detroit dealerships tried opening on Saturdays to sell cars. It was met with violent resistance from salespeople as reported in archive clippings from the Detroit Free Press on www.newspapers.com.

"I thought it was a great idea to open on Saturday when no dealerships were open on Saturdays then," Glassman, who owns Glassman Automotive Group in Southfield, which sells Kia, Subaru, Hyundai, Genesis and Mitsubishi brands, told the Detroit Free Press. "But there was an incredible amount of picketing and rioting. The salespeople wound up unionizing us and that took a year for that to change. There was complete anger from salespeople."

Eventually, most Michigan car dealerships would start opening on Saturdays, but dealers and their employees will never give up Sundays — and they have the law to back them up. There are about 625 new car dealerships in Michigan and all but one are closed on Sunday, said Terry Burns, executive vice president of the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association (MADA).

“It’s been a law since 1953," Burns said, adding that MADA intends to keep it that way. By keeping it a law, he said, "it’s easy to understand and there’s no ambiguity for employees to know, ‘OK, I’m working six days a week and now I might be working seven days a week next.' Right now, it’s very clean, it’s understandable and everybody knows what it is. It’s easy to comply with."

Here's the law

MADA, based in East Lansing, protects car dealers from unfair regulations and legislation on both the state and national levels. The Sunday sales law is one such piece of legislation that MADA looks to protect.

The law reads, "It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to engage in the business of buying, selling, trading or exchanging new, used or second-hand motor vehicles or offering to buy, sell, trade or exchange, or participate in the negotiation thereof, or attempt to buy, sell, trade or exchange any motor vehicle or interest therein, or of any written instrument pertaining thereto, on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday."

A violation of the law is a misdemeanor, and "upon conviction thereof shall be punished by the laws of this state, or by the court, in its discretion, suspending or revoking the dealer's license to do business within the state, or by fine and imprisonment and suspension and/or revocation, in the discretion of the court," the law reads.

The law does offer a couple of exceptions. It does not apply to any person who views "the seventh day of the week, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday ... as the Sabbath" and refrains from car buying on that day. Also, it does not apply to dealerships in counties having a population under 130,000 people.

"That goes back to when this law was first developed," Burns said. "There weren’t many dealers outside of those highly populated areas and those in smaller populated areas did other work, perhaps tractor sales or repair. So there is a bifurcated system and there are some counties in the state where dealerships can be open for sales."

But he knows of only one dealership in the state that remains open: Sundance Chevrolet in Grand Ledge in Eaton County, which has a population of about 79,000 people. Sundance lists its hours on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., but whether or not it sells cars that day is not clear and no one responded to two requests for comment.

'A good ... old blue law'

The law specifies that car dealerships in counties with a population above 130,000 cannot sell cars on Sundays, so they could open for service work. Or not.

"No. My employees are off Sunday," said Jim Seavitt, owner of Village Ford in Dearborn. "It’s hard enough to get a technician. If you’re open on Sunday, you might as well say goodbye to all the techs you have or most of them."

Seavitt likes the law because the type of person that he wants to attract to work for him is someone who does not want to work on Sundays, he said. Also, with many people working from home now, they can adjust their schedules to be more flexible to make time during the week to shop for a car.

"It’s a good law. The old blue law that they used to call it," Seavitt said. "You might find one or two people come in on a Sunday, but a lot of people like it because they can walk our lot and look at the cars without any interference from the salesperson.”

And making it a law means Seavitt's competitors can't be open when he's closed, potentially stealing a customer.

Staying closed on Saturdays, too

The Tamaroff Group not only says 'no' to Sundays, but for two years after the COVID-19 pandemic, it said 'no' to Saturday hours too, said Eric Frehsee, president of The Tamaroff Group.

The group, founded in 1969, owns two locations: one in Southfield and another in Roseville. It offers Honda, Nissan, Kia and Acura brands, selling about 400 new and used cars a month between the two locations, Frehsee said.

"It used to be you had to be open bell-to-bell, now you don’t," Frehsee told the Detroit Free Press.

Frehsee, who runs the business with his cousin, are the third generation of the family to own and operate Tamaroff.

"So we would not consider opening on Sundays even if it was legal, because being family owned and operated, we want to be home with our families and we want our employees to be able to do so as well," Frehsee said.

That's why even before the pandemic Tamaroff stores were open on Saturdays, but with reduced hours compared with competitors, he said. After the height of the pandemic, he said, it was hard to get people back to work and he didn’t want to bring them in if the business wasn’t there.

"So we tasked our management team that if business picks up and we can maintain the same level of sales prior to COVID in five days as we do in six, we’ll stay closed on Saturday," Frehsee said. "We did so by using remote technology, answering customers questions online and doing remote paperwork."

The dealerships also accommodate scheduled test drives for Saturday, he said, “but we didn’t want the entire team to have to be there if the business didn’t prove itself. It was more important at that point to maintain a better morale than push sales.”

Also, like Seavitt, Frehsee found that with people working remote, customers can better manage their time to shop for cars during the week. So the stores remained closed on Saturdays for almost two years and are still closed for service on Saturday.

But recently the stores resumed Saturday car sales. Still, the hours are short: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., he said. Even during the workweek, the stores have shortened the hours to 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, eliminating any nighttime hours.

"We will stay open late if we have to, but with technology we can deliver a car to them after physical working hours," Frehsee said. "We have an employee who works out of state for us, too, and she manages a lot of our incoming internet leads over the weekend too."

'I'd fight against it'

MADA's Burns said there are many reasons why the 70-year-old Sunday sales law has held.

"Way back and still today, you couldn’t confirm insurance, the Secretary of State was not open, in some cases you can’t confirm financing ... so without those other types of businesses open and available you really couldn’t perform work on Sunday," Burns said. "As we’ve grown into the internet age, we can process some Secretary of State work, but we have to validate no-fault insurance in Michigan to drive off the lot and we can’t do that on Sunday."

Yet, every other year or so, a newly elected legislator tries to change the law, Burns said, because they see many other retail businesses open on Sunday and say, " 'Why not car sales?' But the proposal never gets off the ground," he said.

"Most dealers like it the way it is, the employees like it the way it is and the customers like it the way it is," Burns said. "But there is always someone who thinks they would suggest opening it up on Sundays and requiring it. But after they do research and talk to dealers they learn there is no reason to do that."

Glassman, the man who initiated Saturday sales, will tell you the law should remain untouched.

“I’d fight against it," Glassman said. "I do think there’s a danger, if you had some dealers starting to open on Sunday, it could cause a degree of pressure where other dealers would feel the need to open on Sundays. So I am comfortable with the status quo."

Plus, he adds, "I don’t think customers want to take their Sundays, a day of rest for many ... you’re not going to take your car to get diagnosed and sit around there when you’ve got football games to watch in the fall, or going to the beach or camping in the summer and spending time with their families.”

More: GM to start selling Cadillac EVs in Australia and New Zealand

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: In most of Michigan, it is illegal to sell cars on a Sunday