Now, Mr. Archer is among 330 dealers, calling themselves the Committee of Chrysler Affected Dealers, who are contesting the company’s action. Next week and on June 3, the bankruptcy judge handling Chrysler’s case will consider their objections.

Many of those fighting the hardest are dealers who recently spent huge amounts of money to stay in the company’s good graces, who sacrificed their own profits to help keep the company intact or who otherwise thought they had bent over backward to ensure that Chrysler could survive, only to learn that they were the ones who would not.

Image Another dealer who has been cut had planned to expand on a $3 million plot of land in Surprise, Ariz. While departing Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealers slashed prices, General Motors tapped Treasury for another $4 billion. Credit... Joshua Lott for The New York Times

“I’m mad at myself for being duped all these years by them and going along with all of the things they wanted me to do,” said Homer Cutrubus, a Chrysler dealer in Utah since 1969. “If I treated my customers like Chrysler treated me, I wouldn’t have any business.”

For years, Chrysler had been urging Mr. Cutrubus and other dealers to combine dealerships with just one or two of the company’s brands into “alpha” stores selling all three: Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep. It stepped up that pressure in February, he said, and in April he finally agreed to move his Dodge store in Layton, Utah, into a Chrysler-Jeep showroom half a mile away, even though he thought the change made little sense financially and had to be done at his own expense.