Car dealers ask Inslee to ease shutdown rules

The owner of Sunset Chevrolet says that car sales at his dealerships are down 95%. But he says he can sell cars safely, if only Gov. Jay Inslee would revise his stay at home order.

“It's been pretty tough. We had to lay off a couple of hundred people,” said owner Phil Mitchell.

Sunset Chevrolet is part of the Sunset Auto Family with four dealerships in Sumner and Auburn.

Under the governor's safe at home order, only the service departments of car dealers are designated as essential.

Car sales are limited to emergency sales to essential workers who need their vehicles to get to work.

Mitchell is appealing to Inslee to change that.

He wants the ability to welcome buyers back to the showroom, but in small numbers, by appointment only to maintain social distancing.

“All I'm asking is let us do it by appointment only. That way we could control our showroom floor and control the customer process where we're not overrun,” he said.

Mitchell is also asking for clearance to conduct online sales by showing the customers cars over the web.

“Take the customer on a test drive of the car, we can do a whole walk around, we can prepare the whole deal for them, then we just do home delivery.”

Today we shared those ideas with the governor's office.

“I think we're looking at that if there is a real, no touch, online only (sale),” said Chief of Staff David Postman. “It's difficult to actually sell a car without people coming in contact with each other. You know it's just not left on your stoop like a package from Amazon,” he said.

Mitchell says safety would remain paramount.

“I don’t want to get anybody sick. I don’t want to perpetuate the virus any more, but I think there could be safety precautions taken and social distancing and wearing masks.”

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