ELYRIA – The Chrysler signs won’t be coming down today at Abraham Auto Mall in Elyria or Spitzer Autoworld in Sheffield.

Although the dealerships will lose their franchises with Chrysler today, they are holding out hope that something will change that will keep them selling Chryslers.

“We’re not taking them down,” Nick Abraham said. “They have to come and get them.”

Abraham said he’s been liquidating the 117 new Jeep and other Chrysler vehicles he had in his inventory when he learned last month that his was one of the nearly 800 dealerships nationwide the automaker would be cutting ties to as of today.

He said he’d trimmed the number of vehicles down to 30 by Monday afternoon and was hoping to have sold even more by the end of the day, but many of those sales have been at a loss.

“They’re just great deals, and some of them are losses, but we needed to get rid of them,” he said.

Chrysler may help with moving his remaining inventory, but Abraham said it would be at a loss, so he decided he’d rather take a loss to a customer rather than the company that abandoned him.

“As long as we’ve been loyal to them, they haven’t been loyal to us,” he said.

Abraham also will be left with about $300,000 in unused Chrysler parts, and while the dealership will continue to do work on Chryslers, it won’t be able to honor warranties. That work will go to dealerships still in the Chrysler family, Abraham said.

Abraham said he’s unsure what impact U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision to stay the sale of Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat will mean for dealership losing their Chrysler affiliation.

Anthony Giardini, attorney for the Spitzer Auto Group, said a hearing is set today in New York before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez, who’s overseeing the automaker’s restructuring efforts.

Spitzer is one of the car dealers that has asked Gonzalez to allow them to keep selling the cars.

It could mean bankruptcy for the Elyria-based Spitzer if it loses the seven dealerships it owns in Ohio and Florida that Chrysler has targeted.

“(The judge) has not ruled on that motion yet, and until he does, it’s not over,” Giardini said.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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