The Question
A client asked this on an airport run, half joking, watching a dealership slide past the window with a hundred cars on the lot and not one human being in sight. Sunday morning. Nobody home. Why?
Selling one of those cars that morning would be a crime. Not a fine on a schedule somewhere. A misdemeanor, with a jail term attached.
The Assumption
Most people assume it's a dealer preference. A day off, an industry custom, maybe a franchise agreement. It isn't. It is written into Colorado law, in Title 44 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, and the operative sentence of section 44-20-302 is worth reading in full because of how thoroughly it closes the door:
“No person, firm, or corporation, whether owner, proprietor, agent, or employee, shall keep open, operate, or assist in keeping open or operating any place or premises or residences, whether open or closed, for the purpose of selling, bartering, or exchanging or offering for sale, barter, or exchange any motor vehicle, whether new, used, or secondhand, on the first day of the week commonly called Sunday.”
Read it again and notice how much ground it covers. Not just selling. Bartering. Exchanging. Offering. Not just a dealership: a residence, whether open or closed. Somebody wrote that sentence specifically to prevent every clever workaround they could imagine in 1955, including the guy who would have just moved the transaction to his kitchen table.
The penalties, per the Colorado General Assembly's own Legislative Council Staff issue brief on motor vehicle sales: a misdemeanor, a fine between $75 and $1,000, up to six months in county jail, and possible suspension or revocation of the dealer's license.
The Rabbit Hole
Now the part that took some digging, because nearly every version of this story online gets it wrong.
You will read that the law dates to 1953. It doesn't. The actual enactment is House Bill No. 45 of the Fortieth General Assembly, Laws of 1955, page 214, effective April 8, 1955. We know the date precisely because dealers sued over it almost immediately, and the Colorado Supreme Court reproduced the whole act in its opinion. From the agreed statement of the case in Mosko v. Dunbar, 135 Colo. 172, 309 P.2d 581 (1957):
“The Fortieth General Assembly of the state of Colorado enacted a statute known as House Bill No. 45, Laws 1955, p. 214, effective April 8, 1955, now C.R.S. '53, 13-20-1 et seq.”
There is your 1953. It is the Colorado Revised Statutes of 1953, the compilation the new law was filed into. Somewhere along the way somebody read that citation as a date, and everybody copied it. The session law itself, digitized by the University of Colorado law library, is titled with admirable bluntness: “To Prohibit the Sale of Motor Vehicles on Sunday, and to Provide Penalties for Violation of this Act,” 1955, Chapter 81, page 214.
The History
The dealers who sued were Max Mosko and Lillian Meltz Mosko, doing business as Max Mosko Auto Wholesale, joined by Jack P. Palmer of The Bargain Lot and Aaron and Jean Mosko. They had been open on Sundays, they wanted to stay open on Sundays, and they argued the act violated the Colorado Constitution's rule against special legislation and the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Why, they asked, can a tire shop open and a car lot can't?
It was close. According to the Denver Law Review's contemporaneous case note, the Colorado Supreme Court first held the act unconstitutional — and then, on rehearing, reversed itself and upheld it. The car dealers won, briefly, and then lost permanently on April 29, 1957.
The exemptions that survived that fight are still in the statute today, and they are a fossil record of 1955 Colorado politics. You may open on Sunday to sell petroleum products, tires and accessories. You may run a repair shop. You may tow and wreck. And, added later, you may sell boats, boat trailers, snowmobiles and snowmobile trailers — which is how you end up in a state where a snowmobile is a legal Sunday purchase and the truck to haul it is not.
Blue laws are older than cars. Colorado had a pile of them, most of them now scrubbed off the books. The Denver7 reporter who went looking for the black-car law turned up a real one from the 1908 revised statutes instead: barbering on Sunday was a misdemeanor, punishable by twenty-five to fifty dollars or fifteen to thirty days in the county jail. A Sunday haircut could cost you a month.
That's the world this statute was born into. The idea that the state has a legitimate interest in making everybody take the same day off was not controversial in 1955; it was the water everyone swam in. What makes the car version interesting is that it outlived all its siblings. The barbers are open. The liquor rules changed. The car lots are still dark, seventy-one years later, and the reason has quietly shifted from Sunday observance to something much more practical.
The Modern Answer
Colorado is not alone, but it is in the minority. That same legislative issue brief puts the count plainly: “The majority of the states allow motor vehicle dealers to sell vehicles on Sunday; but 13 states, including Colorado, prohibit the sale of motor vehicles on Sunday.”
The law is live, not decorative. The Colorado Department of Revenue's Auto Industry Division warns dealers on its off-premise permit page that any permitted event date falling on a Sunday is still subject to the closing law, and that the permit “should NOT be construed as permitting Sunday sales in violation of that law.” Translation: the state anticipates people trying, at car shows and mall lots, and says no in advance.
Repeal comes up. Denver7 reported in 2017 that the legislature has taken several runs at it and that it gets defeated each time, with dealers arguing that opening a seventh day would push vehicle prices up ten to fifteen percent. We could not find a repeal bill page on the General Assembly's site to attach to those attempts, so treat the specifics as reported rather than documented. The direction of travel is not in dispute, though: nothing has passed.
And then there's the fact that almost nobody mentions. Colorado's Sunday closing law has an expiration date built into it. Section 44-20-304 is one sentence long:
“This part 3 is repealed, effective September 1, 2027.”
It comes up for sunset review before then, and the General Assembly will almost certainly continue it, the way it has continued the rest of the dealer regulation scheme. But as the statute currently reads, a seventy-two-year-old law disappears on its own in the fall of 2027 unless somebody votes to keep it.
The dealer argument, as reported, always lands in the same place: nobody wants to be the first to open. If one lot opens Sunday, every lot within twenty miles has to match it, and within a year the whole industry is paying seven days of staffing for the same number of cars sold. The law is the thing that keeps the prisoners' dilemma from resolving the expensive way. That's also, not coincidentally, why the people you would expect to fight hardest for repeal are the ones lobbying to keep it.
Whatever you think of that, the effect on a salesperson's life is real. It is one of the only jobs in American retail where a guaranteed day off is written into state law instead of an employee handbook that can change on a Tuesday.
Dispatch Notes
Would we take that deal? No.
Arion operates 24/7, 365, holidays included. Christmas morning, New Year's Eve, the Sunday in the middle of a three-day storm — somebody has a flight, and the flight does not care what day it is. A law that closed us one day a week would not give our drivers a day off. It would hand that day to whoever stayed open.
So I read the car dealers' law with something closer to envy than judgment. They got the one thing this industry never gets: a day when the phone is supposed to be quiet, guaranteed by somebody other than your own willpower. Most of us have to schedule that ourselves, and most of us are bad at it.
— Jim Becker, Director of Ops & Client Experience, Arion, LLC
Sources
- C.R.S. 44-20-302, Sunday closing (Colorado Revised Statutes 2024, Title 44) — official statute text
- C.R.S. 44-20-304, Repeal of part — “This part 3 is repealed, effective September 1, 2027.”
- Mosko v. Dunbar, 135 Colo. 172, 309 P.2d 581 (1957) — full opinion, quoting House Bill No. 45 of 1955
- Session Laws of Colorado 1955, ch. 81, p. 214 — University of Colorado Law Library digitization
- “Colorado Sunday Closing Statute Upheld,” Denver Law Review vol. 34 — contemporaneous note on the rehearing reversal
- Legislative Council Staff, “Regulation of Motor Vehicle Sales,” Issue Brief 19-22 (Dec. 2019) — penalties and the 13-state count
- Colorado Auto Industry Division, off-premise permit requirements — current enforcement posture
- Denver7, “Can you really not drive a black car on Sunday in Denver?” — debunk of the black-car myth; repeal attempts and dealer arguments
Frequently Asked Questions
How many trips has Arion completed?
3,314 completed transfers across Colorado since opening on October 17, 2025 with one driver and one vehicle, covering 650,000+ miles.
Has Arion had any accidents?
Zero accidents in more than 650,000 miles. One speeding ticket — no passengers on board, nobody hurt, fine paid.
What percentage of Arion's trips are airport transfers?
More than half — 1,870 of our 3,314 completed transfers since we opened included an airport pickup or drop-off, most of them DEN, plus 490 Eagle County (EGE) transfers into Vail and Beaver Creek. Airport work is heaviest December through March.
Does Arion operate during Colorado snowstorms?
Yes. We've worked through every major Colorado winter storm since opening in October 2025. When flights cancel, the highway becomes Plan B — and demand usually spikes all at once.
How many repeat clients does Arion have?
68% of reservations come from returning clients, and 80.1% of revenue came from repeat clients.
What does it cost to maintain a luxury SUV fleet in Colorado?
Through the first 2,500 trips: $120,807 in fuel, $129,600 in commercial insurance, roughly $12,000 across 83 oil changes, about $25,000 in tires (16 sets of four, plus spares), and $33,611 in routine maintenance covering hoses, transmissions, engines, water pumps, batteries and labor — $70,611 in upkeep on top of fuel and insurance. Mountain driving wears vehicles faster than city driving, and the maintenance schedule reflects that.
How do I book Arion transportation?
Call (970) 703-4995 or visit ridearion.com/contact for a free quote on your itinerary.
Do you offer point-to-point trips as well as hourly service?
Both. Point-to-point is priced for a single transfer such as home to DEN or hotel to a venue. Hourly (as-directed) service keeps the same chauffeur and vehicle for dinners, meetings, tours, and multi-stop nights.
Can I set up a recurring or corporate account?
Yes. Recurring commuters, executive assistants, hotels, and event planners get a standing profile with preferred vehicle, saved addresses, consolidated monthly invoicing, and priority dispatch.
