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These are 2014's best-selling cars and trucks

Now that 2014 is no more than a set of numbers on spreadsheets, at last, the grist mill gets its first real load to chew on. The number one selling vehicle in America last year was the Ford F-Series, a fact that should surprise you only if your family name is Van Winkle and your naps tend to last 38 years, which is how long the Ford pickup has ruled our buying landscape. Even though series sales were down 1.3 percent, it still racked up 753,851 units. That's 2,065.3 sales per day, every day, all year. The Chevrolet Silverado, up 10.3 percent for the year, was still a daylight second at 529,755 units. The cab-and-bed love continued into third place with the Ram 1500-3500 trucks, gaining 23.6-percent year-on-year to clock 439,789 units. The robust turnout at The Bighorn and Jeep helped Fiat-Chrysler increase its sales by 16 percent, past the two-million mark. Our number one car? The Toyota Camry, staying in first place with a 4.9-percent sales boost to 428,606 sales, trailed again by the Honda Accord at number five with 388,374 sales. Accord sales rose six percent, and if it's any consolation to Honda for coming in second - not that it needs one - it is the only manufacturer to have three vehicles in the top ten. The rest of the list: the Nissan Altima with 335,644 sales (+4.7%), the Honda CR-V with 355,019 (+10.2%), the Toyota Corolla/Matrix combo with 339,498 (+5.9%), the Honda Civic with 325,981 (-3.1%), and the Ford Fusion with 306,860 sales (+2.9%). Total sales for the year were up six percent to 16.5 million vehicles, a volume not seen since 2006, aided by a strong December that was up by 11 percent year-on-year. Ford was the top selling brand overall but sales didn't really budge from 2013, while Subaru rocketed up 21 percent to finish with 513,693 sales. At the precious end, BMW, Audi, Porsche and Land Rover all had record years, and Kelley Blue Book thinks we could be looking at 17 million sales for the next two or three years. Looks like it's time to start making hay again... Featured Gallery Best-selling vehicles of 2014 View 10 Photos News Source: Detroit News, Associated Press Auto News Chevrolet Ford Honda Nissan RAM Toyota Car Buying Truck Sedan sales

Struggling McLaren-Honda F1 partners near 'fork in the road'

WOKING, England - McLaren's partnership with Honda has not worked so far, and the team is now approaching a "fork in the road," executive director Zak Brown said on Wednesday. Speaking to Reuters in his office at the Formula One team's headquarters, Brown (pictured above) indicated clearly that a parting of the ways was a real option under consideration by management. The American said engine upgrades promised for this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix were not ready, and the Japanese manufacturer could not say when they might be. And while McLaren still wanted to win championships with Honda, there were serious concerns as to whether that was achievable. "Honda's working very hard, but they seem a bit lost," said Brown, who replaced Ron Dennis at the helm late last year. "We were only told recently that we wouldn't have the upgrade coming (for Montreal) ... and we don't have a definitive timeline, which is concerning because the pain is great and we can't sit around forever. "We were eagerly awaiting this upgrade as were our drivers, and it's a big disappointment that it's not coming. It's not lack of effort, but they are struggling to get it to come together."FAILURE AND EMBARRASSMENT McLaren, the second oldest and most successful team in Formula One after Ferrari in terms of race wins, are the only ones yet to score a point this season. They have not won a race since 2012. The renewed partnership with Honda in 2015 was billed as a return to the glory days, when French great Alain Prost and the late Brazilian Ayrton Senna dominated the late 1980s and early 1990s. Instead it has brought failure and embarrassment to the former world champions, whose cars have failed to finish races -- and sometimes even start them -- due to engine failures. Spanish driver Fernando Alonso, a double world champion whose future is uncertain, said in March that "we have only one problem, and that is the power unit. There is no reliability and there is no power." Honda's engine troubles even plagued Alonso at the Indy 500, where a failure took him out of the race. McLaren were ninth in 2015, sixth last year and this season could become their worst ever. MARCHING ORDERS "The executive committee have now given us our marching orders," said Brown, who is also chairman of the fast-growing Motorsport Network media group. "We're not going to go into another year like this, in hope." "I don't want to get into what our options are.

Honda reveals next-gen Fit Hybrid

Psst! Remember late last month when we showed you those Japanese magazine scans purporting to show the next Honda Fit? The ones with the markedly more aggressive snout and Cuisinart-blade alloys? Yup, they were the real deal, but they weren't the standard model, they were images of the new Hybrid. We know this because Honda has just released a handful of images and some details on its forthcoming gas-electric hatchback, and the images line up perfectly.
The big story for the third-generation Fit Hybrid will be the fuel economy, naturally. Honda says it has achieved economy ratings of 36.4 kilometers per liter - 86 miles per gallon - on its home-market cycle, highest among all hybrid models in Japan and a 35-percent improvement over the current Fit Hybrid, a model not sold in the US.
Honda says it has achieved economy ratings of 86 mpg on its home-market cycle.