I don't think you guys understand. It's not "free" to operate dealerships. Any additional dealership costs the manufacturer money...in factory reps, in startup money and loans, in many other ways. When you have, for example, 2,904 Chrysler selling 464k vehicles a year compared to 1,066 Nissan dealers selling 676k vehicles a year...there's a problem. Each Chrysler dealer sells 13 vehicles a month....where the Nissan dealer is seeing 53 vehicles a month pass through. And the argument can be made (through measurements of incentives and transaction prices) that the Nissan dealer makes more money PER VEHICLE than the Chrysler dealer....so the problem is compounded.
If Chrysler were to offer territories to its dealers (like Lexus or Infiniti or Saturn), they would increase the volume per dealership requiring more sales and service people. There would be some job loss, but (competition being what it is) the more productive sales and service personnel would keep their jobs and probably get a raise.
When the "Big 3" (plus some major independents) were expanding after WWII, they opened a franchise in nearly every little town. One of the reasons why Chevrolet and Ford are so popular in this country is that every town had a dealer (4,147 and 3,808, respectively, in the US last year). While Ford is the number four brand according to sales per dealer, Chevrolet is about to be passed by Hyundai (630 dealers), even Infiniti has more volume per dealer than the "volume" Chevrolet brand.
The dealer-in-every-town concept is ancient. Roads are better...cars are better...buyers can travel a few miles to buy a new car. Traveling 30 miles to find a local dealer is not outrageous. With dealer trades, a dealer can have a specific car from someone else's inventory within a day or two.
If Chrysler could retain its current volume, they would be more competitive with 1/3 to 1/4 of its dealers. At 700 dealers, Chrysler would be in the top 10 (vehicle/dealer range of Chevrolet) instead of its current ranking of 28th (behind Pontiac but ahead of Jeep).