Press

It's partly the cars that keeps customers coming, sure, but it's also the experience those customers have in the showroom. While General Motors and Chrysler are closing roughly 1,100 and 800 dealerships nationwide, respectively (and surviving dealerships conjure ways to attract their customers), Jaguar joins several other luxury brands in shining through the recession's haze.

Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Jaguar are the top three brands when it comes to consumer satisfaction at their dealerships. Along with Saturn and Land Rover, they round out the top five in our list of the best dealerships in the country.

To generate our list of the best car dealerships this year, we used data provided by Pied Piper Management, a California-based marketing firm. The numbers were collected between July 2008 and June 2009 using 3,531 anonymous shoppers at dealerships of every automotive brand, nationwide. The prospective car buyers were questioned on many aspects of their experiences at the dealerships, from whether a salesperson smiled to whether they were offered a brochure to whether they planned to purchase a vehicle from that particular showroom.

Pied Piper analysts then used that information to evaluate how effectively a dealership sells cars, to compare particular sales processes to industry benchmarks and to identify deficiencies in certain brands. Each brand was then given a score as a factor of overall sales effectiveness, with a higher score meaning better sales rates, as well as a greater likelihood of brand-exclusive dealerships.