To find the 10 hottest cars in America for CNNMoney.com, Edmunds.com, a partner providing data and content for CNN Web sites, looked for three things: Actual selling prices closest to the vehicle's full sticker price; lowest amounts in rebates or other sales incentives; shortest times spent on dealer lots before being snapped up by buyers.

The Prius scores big in all those areas. While all other cars on the list sell for at least some small amount under their actual sticker price, once incentives are factored in, the Prius still sells for 10 percent over sticker price.

On average, a Prius spends just nine days on a dealer lot before being driven away by a buyer, second only to the Mini Cooper, which lingers for just six days. (If a car has an average "days to turn" of less than 10, it generally means the cars are mostly pre-ordered so they have already been sold before they arrive at the dealership.)

In this sort of analysis, Toyota's low-priced Scion brand benefits from the fact that very few of its cars are purchased from dealer inventories. Instead, most buyers order customized versions. Those vehicles are customized before being sent to the dealership. That makes Scion's "days to turn" very low, said Mike Chung, a pricing analyst with Edmunds.com.