Yesterday marked the first Sunday in 51 years that Rhode Island car dealers were legally open for business.

“I guess ‘relieved’ would be the most important word,” said Jim Botvin, owner of Colonial Toyota, in Pawtucket. “We can compete now.”

Botvin and several other auto dealers fought for more than two years to overturn a 1956 law that banned Sunday auto sales in the Ocean State. They argued that the decades-old law was passed in a different era, when Sundays were set aside for families and leisure, whereas today’s customers want to be able to shop seven days a week.

The dealers were opposed by some fellow members of the Rhode Island Auto Dealers Association, which lobbied to keep the law as it was, arguing that Sunday sales would increase their costs without increasing sales.

The dealers supporting Sunday auto sales won. Last month, the General Assembly included language in the state budget that allowed the dealers to open on Sundays between noon and 6 p.m. The law took effect yesterday.

In an office at his Pawtucket dealership yesterday, Botvin talked about efforts he and other dealers have made to allow Sunday auto sales, and about the bitterness the dispute has caused within the Rhode Island Auto Dealers Association.

Even though the battle is over, Botvin easily slips back into lobbying mode, listing all the reasons why it didn’t make sense to forbid Sunday auto sales. He sounded like someone who had won an argument, yet remained incredulous that the argument even took place.

“It was two years of fighting for no reason at all — the right to open my own business,” he said yesterday, as a handful of customers trickled in.

Botvin said that on Sundays, he used to drive across the state line to Seekonk and watch customers with Rhode Island license plates doing business with his competitors.

“It would kill me,” he said. “It ate my heart out.”

Richard Palumbo, owner of King Richard’s Suzuki, in East Providence, said he was elated that the ban was lifted.

“It’s a different world out there,” he said. “People want things when they want them. You can’t sell when you are closed.”

For several months between 2005 and 2006, Botvin, Palumbo, and a handful of other Rhode Island dealers did open on Sundays in defiance of the ban. They argued that a 2005 state law allowing any retail establishment to open on any day of the year essentially trumped the 1956 law that banned Sunday auto sales. Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch asked the courts to interpret the new law. Last July, Superior Court Judge Susan E. McGuirl rejected the dealers’ arguments and upheld the Sunday ban.

Palumbo, the Suzuki dealer, said abolishing the ban was a victory for everyone — car dealers, the state coffers, and customers who would prefer to shop on Sundays.

“Usually it’s the only free day you have,” said Cathy Taylor, who was car shopping with her husband, Ed, at the Suzuki dealership yesterday.

At Colonial Toyota, Ryan Maillet and Catherine Fields were shopping for a used Camry. They drove by one dealership in East Providence that was closed, and then drove to the Pawtucket one. They said they hadn’t realized Rhode Island previously banned Sunday car sales. Maillet said he works nights doing security work for the Hasbro toy company; Fields said she also works nights, as a waitress at Kartabar restaurant, in Providence. Sunday afternoon was a convenient time to shop for a car, they said.

tbarmann@projo.com