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More than half of Mazdas sold in 2018 are CX-5s, and other interesting sales facts

Last year was a seriously good year for carmakers. Overall, more vehicles were sold than in 2017, and the total number wasn't far off of the all-time record in 2016. Digging deeper into the numbers, you'll find some pretty usual stuff including the Ford F-Series still being the bestselling pickup truck in America, and a continued trend toward crossovers. But there are also some oddball factoids tucked in these sales reports, some that defy the trends, and some that are extremes of the public's buying preferences. We've compiled several interesting tidbits from last year's sales right here for your enjoyment. More than half of Mazda's sales were of CX-5s Yes, over half of all Mazda sales were of this one model. The company sold 300,325 cars in America last year, and 150,622 of them were CX-5 crossovers, or 50.1 percent. Just for emphasis, that means the other 49.8 percent of Mazda's sales were split among five other models, the Miata, 3, 6, CX-3 and CX-9. Breaking that down further, the second-best seller was the Mazda3 at 64,638, which isn't even half of the CX-5's sales. People are crazy for Mazda's middle crossover. Volkswagen actually sold more cars than crossovers It's clear that the crossover is the future king of car sales. For most mainstream brands, it already is. Chevy, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Mazda and Nissan all sold more crossovers and SUVs than they did conventional sedans and hatchbacks. There are holdouts, though, and one of them is Volkswagen. At the end of 2018, the company sold 189,343 cars and 164,721 crossovers in the U.S. So that's one win for the classic car set, and it's justification for VW to maintain its car line for the foreseeable future. It's a bit of a hollow victory, though. Look closer and you'll see that car sales were down 28 percent from 2017, when VW sold 262,029 cars. Crossovers, on the other hand, jumped 112 percent from 2017 when 77,647 crossovers moved through U.S. dealers. So expect the tables to turn very soon. Mustang is still the muscle-car sales king, but Challenger is the only one to improve Once again, the Ford Mustang topped the muscle-car sales charts, beating out the Dodge Challenger and Chevy Camaro. Ford moved 75,842 of the ponies in 2018, while Dodge sold 66,716 Challengers for second place, and Chevy sold 50,963 Camaros to bring up the rear.

A look at the Dodge Demon's drag settings, modes, and go-fast tech

In the same video that gave us a peek at the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon's performance stats, there's a serious dump of info on the tech and tools that will likely help this muscle coupe slaughter drag strips. Dodge has outlined a few of them for us and we're using the power of inference to figure out the rest. Here's what we've gathered. A lot of these hints come from the Demon's version of Performance Pages, the infotainment screens that show what SRT models are doing and let the driver change the powertrain and chassis setup. There are a lot of Demon-only features, including line lock, a quick cooldown mode for the supercharged engine, and data recording. And of course there are pages to show a digital time slip with acceleration and braking figures, a g-load plot, and lots of gauges to track temps and levels. The engine output is shown in the video on a special Dyno page. It tracks horsepower and torque over time on the upper graph, and engine rpm and shift points on the lower graph. And we think it's still hiding something. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Any good drag car has a line lock, allowing the driver to lock the front brakes and leave the rears free to do a nice tire-warming (or tire-shredding, depending on length) burnout. Ford has it on the Mustang, Chevy puts it on the ZL1, and now Dodge is adding it to the Demon. It should help get the giant Nitto tires up to temp for a drag run. And once the tires are warm, there's launch control, just like on the SRT Hellcat, with selectable rpm to dial things in for the conditions. The Demon also has a shift light in the cluster, and the driver can set a shift point individually for each gear. After each drag run, you can activate Quick Cooldown, which Dodge says uses the first production application of After-Run Chiller – it runs the cooling fan and intercooler coolant pump with the engine off until the coolant reaches its target temp. It's shown in one of the slides above. The checklist on the left side of that page suggests it requires a set of conditions be met to work: engine off, hood open, and sufficient battery level. This further reinforces our theory that the supercharger is going to make big boost, beyond the Hellcat's 11.6 psi. And while you're waiting for the supercharger to cool off for another run, you can review the performance data the car records.

Ford, Chrysler and Mazda expand scope of Takata airbag recalls

The scope of the Takata airbag inflator recall is ballooning once again across the United States. Where Honda has elected to take its driver-side airbag campaign nationwide, Chrysler Group and Ford have now announced expanded regional actions to cover some passenger-side airbag inflators. Mazda is adding more regions, as well. For Chrysler Group, the campaign covers the inflators on 149,150 examples of the 2003-model-year Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups. The recall is limited to vehicles sold or ever registered in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands. The company will begin notifying affected customers on January 19. According to Chrysler's announcement of the action, the passenger side inflators in these trucks "are of a type that is not used in any of the other vehicles affected by Chrysler Group's regional field action." The automaker says that it's not aware of any actual failures or accidents in these pickups and even claims there are no "observed failures in laboratory testing of its airbag modules." The company is continuing to study the problem, though. Ford is taking a similar step by issuing a recall of inflators for 38,500 examples of the 2004-2005 Ranger and 2005-2006 Ford GT. The campaign only affects vehicles originally sold or ever registered in Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Certain zip codes of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Guam, Saipan and American Samoa are also covered. There's already precedent for passenger-side airbags to be covered under the Takata inflator recall. When many automakers announced campaigns in June, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota all included that side in some of their repairs. Subaru subsequently did, as well. In addition, Mazda is expanding the scope of its recall to add Florida, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Saipan, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to the affected areas. The company estimates that it has a total of 86,773 vehicles in need of repair. Mazda is also teaming with Toyota to begin independent testing of the Takata inflators. Scroll down to read all of the automakers' announcements of these newly expanded recalls. Statement: Air-Bag Inflators December 3, 2014 , Auburn Hills, Mich.