With heavy advertising and good old-fashioned salesmanship, savvy car dealers went all out in December to finish the year with strong sales, according to Business Week magazine.

The reason for the extra effort: Jan. 2 marked the end of the zero percent financing deals that Detroit carmakers offered up in mid-September to get buyers, who had been spooked by the impending recession and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, back into the showroom.

"It's the best sales incentive program I've ever seen," Rene Isip, who runs four dealerships

in Dallas for Charlotte-based Sonic Automotive Inc., told the magazine.

Islip better have made the most of it. Even though new programs are being announced -- General Motors Co.'s $2,002 discount, for example -- deals as sweet as free financing are unlikely to come around again for a long time, according to Business Week. And no one has benefited as much from Detroit's generous promotions as have the nation's auto dealers.

While the combination of big incentives and a weakening economy decimated profits at the Big Three automakers, the reverse has been true

for large U.S. dealer chains. The incentive-fueled sales boom turned 2001 into one of their best years ever as buyers poured in to take

advantage of lower prices.

Even Wall Street applauded the dealers' good

fortune: Shares of the biggest chains -- market leader AutoNation, followed by UnitedAuto Group, then Group 1 Automotive -- doubled or

tripled last year.

With the stumbling economy, rising unemployment, and the end of the incentives all expected to slow new car sales in 2002, the question now is whether dealers' fortunes will stall out, too.

Dealers are hoping to make up much of the difference with stronger used-car sales, where they book better margins. Used-car sales are likely to grow by just 100,000 vehicles next year, to 12.7 million, according to Paul Taylor, chief economist for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA).

Fat margins may be a thing of the past, according to Business Week. Thanks mostly to trade-ins from the zero percent financing, used-car prices tumbled six percent in 2001, squeezing profits, the magazine reported.