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Toyota is among the best-loved car brands in America, according to our analysis, joining a couple of domestics brands--Ford and Chevrolet--in a race to the top.

To compile our list of America's Best Car Brands, we looked at data from Consumer Reports that rated each brand based on safety, quality, value, performance, design/style, technology/innovation and environmental friendliness. We also considered scores from the 2010 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index U.S. Auto Industry Study, a national benchmarking study that uses mystery shoppers to measure and compare how consumers are treated at car dealerships.

Daimler AG's Mercedes and Toyota Motor Co's luxury Lexus brand topped a ranking intended to measure how well U.S. car shoppers were treated in dealer showrooms whether they bought a new car or not. The survey released by Monterey, California-based sales consultancy Pied Piper showed Mercedes and Lexus in first and second place followed by Jaguar, Saturn and Land Rover.

Fran O'Hagan, study author and president of Pied Piper, said up to 90 percent of U.S. car shoppers now walk out of car dealerships without buying, making satisfaction with the shopping experience very important in a declining market.

The Pied Piper study, now in its third year, was based on the results from 3,531 paid researchers posing as car shoppers who rated dealerships on the qualities that actual car shoppers report as being important.

Pied Piper clients include major automakers such as Honda Motor Co and Volkswagen AG as well as listed dealership groups Group 1 Automotive Inc and AutoNation.