View From a Height

Baby You Can Drive My Car

Now, let's see. I work during the week. I can't go test-drive cars on Saturday. It's illegal for a dealership to sell me a car on Sunday. Read that again. Walking through a large parking lot tell me nothing - < DeNiro as Capone Voice >nothing < /DeNiro as Capone Voice > - about the car. Which means that I have to take time off work to go buy a car, if I want to see it by anything brighter than the light of the silvery moon. What's more, if I owned a car dealership, I'd need to be closed both Saturday and Sunday.

Let's keep it that way.

Others said most dealerships don't want to open Sundays because it gives employees the day off and levels the competition if all lots are closed. Others said it gives consumers a day to look at cars without salespeople hovering over them.

This doesn't have anything to do with employees' religious observance. I realize that most car salesmen could use all the time in church they can get, but my guess is that this isn't where most of the are going. It has to do with car companies keeping their costs down, helped out by the government. While a specific car may be something of an impulse buy, my guess is that most people and business that are going to buy cars are going to buy them anyway. So the dealerships know they can stay closed and still make the same number of sales.

We have a chain of hobby stores here called "Hobby Lobby." You know, they sell frames and mirrors and cardboard and ribbons and buttons and bows. They're closed on Sunday. Michael's, the national chain, isn't. Hobby Lobby believes in this enough to take the hit. Why does Freeway Ford get a free pass?

I want to see people in church on Sunday, too, but if they're in church, they're not out buying the cars, either. Seriously, if an auto dealership advertised itself as "Sundays-off, Family-friendly," and if that mattered to people, which it clearly does, then they could make a point of shopping there.

Tell you what. Give 'em Wednesday off, and don't open until noon on Sundays. Or, if you're close on Saturdays, you don't have to be closed on Sundays.

Either that, or get The Progressives to propose a bill requiring that employers give employees time off to go buy a car. Heh.

UPDATE: Bill Scanlon of the Rocky replies to an email, "Rep. Weissman pushed it, knowing it would fail, but wanting to see how much support it would have. He said he though he had 29 votes. The voice vote seemed to indicate that he had about that many, although a later formal vote indicated that he only had 13."

So this was clearly bipartisan nannying.