Reviews & Awards

The Dealer of the Year is the highest honor awarded by DealerRater and Cars.com. It designates the absolute #1 top-ranked dealership within a specific category for that calendar year. D&M Leasing has secured the top spot not just in Texas, but across the entire Southwest Region and nationally for leasing companies — every year since 2014. This is not a “top 10” or “top 100” list. There is exactly one winner per category. D&M has been that one winner for 12 consecutive years.

Dealerships must first meet strict minimum requirements: a minimum of 25 verified reviews during the calendar year, an average rating above 4.0 out of 5.0, at least one review collected in every quarter of the year (proving consistent performance, not a seasonal push), and no platform violations. Once qualified, Cars.com calculates a PowerScore™ using a Bayesian algorithm that weights three factors: average star rating, total review volume, and the dealership’s response rate to customer reviews. The single dealership with the highest PowerScore in their category wins the award. The competition is intense — margins often come down to thousandths of a decimal point across 36,000+ competing dealerships. Winning this once is remarkable. Winning it 12 years in a row requires a level of consistent customer service that virtually no other dealership in the country has achieved.

The Consumer Satisfaction Award recognizes the top tier of dealerships nationwide. Rather than designating a single #1 winner per category, it is awarded to the highest-performing percentage of dealerships — traditionally the top 10% of all U.S. dealers — that provide exceptional customer experiences. Dealerships must meet the exact same rigorous baseline requirements as the Dealer of the Year program: 25+ verified reviews, a 4.0+ star rating, and consistent quarterly reviews. Earning both the Dealer of the Year and Consumer Satisfaction Award simultaneously — which D&M has done for 11 consecutive years — means dominating both a specific category and the general national landscape. It requires a highly coordinated team effort between agents and management to consistently generate, monitor, and respond to customer feedback year after year.

These awards are not bought. They cannot be paid for. They are earned entirely through verified customer reviews — meaning the only way to win them is by delivering an exceptional experience to real people, consistently, for years. When a company wins Dealer of the Year once, it means they had a great year. When they win it 12 years in a row, competing against 36,000+ dealerships every single year, it means customer service is not a campaign — it is the foundation of how they operate. For you, it means that when you work with D&M, you are working with the single most consistently top-rated leasing company in America. Not because we say so — because over 33,500 customers have said so, verified and tracked by independent third-party platforms.

No. DealerRater and Cars.com award programs are entirely review-driven. There is no pay-to-play option. The PowerScore algorithm is calculated independently based on verified customer reviews, and the results are published publicly. A dealership either earns it through real customer feedback or they don’t. DealerRater is one of the largest and most established automotive review platforms in the country, with over 41,000 dealerships listed. Cars.com is the #1 most recognized automotive marketplace, visited by nearly 30 million in-market consumers each month. These are the industry standard for measuring customer satisfaction — and D&M has set the bar higher than any other leasing company in their history.