DETROIT -- The Honda Accord was the nation's top selling car for 1989, grabbing the No. 1 spot for the first time ever and surpassing sales of the No. 2 Ford Taurus by more than 14,600 units, industry figures showed Friday.
However, the best selling vehicle -- which includes trucks as well as cars -- was still Ford Motor Co.'s F-series pickup truck, with 566,387 units sold in the United States last year.
The Chevrolet C-K pickup truck, made by General Motors Corp., followed with 522,404 copies sold last year.
Ford has held the top spot on overall vehicle sales for eight years in a row, a company spokesman said.
In the car end of the market, the Accord's U.S. sales during 1989 totaled 362,707 units, with 60 percent of those models built at Honda's U.S. plant in Ohio.
The Accord outsold Ford's mid-sized Taurus, which posted sales of 348,061 units.
Ford's Escort subcompact, the nation's best selling car for both 1987 and 1988, dropped to third place, with 333,535 units sold.
However, in November Ford closed its Wayne, Mich., assembly plant -- the main source of Escort production -- to change over to an all new model due this spring.
Chevrolet's mid-sized Corsica sedan and Beretta coupe, which GM considers to be a single car line, was the fourth best selling car for 1989, with a total 326,006 units sold.
Chevrolet's smaller Cavalier rounded out the list of the five best selling cars, with 295,715 cars sold during 1989.
