If you watched the Super Bowl last night, you probably caught Chevrolet's ad for the 2012 Silverado pickup. Most saw it as a clever riff on the whole 2012/Mayan calendar/world-ending thing that's rumored to occur later this year. When the folks at Ford watched it, though, all they saw was red.

The premise of the ad is simple: the apocalypse has arrived on schedule, delivered by a shower of falling meteors, alien space ships, volcanic eruptions, and a plague of frogs. As the dust settles, four friends meet up at a pre-designated rendez-vous point in their Chevrolet Silverados. Backed by strains of Barry Manilow's 1976 key-change extravaganza, "Looks Like We Made It", the four briefly discuss their friend Dave, who's nowhere to be seen.

Honda has issued two recalls today -- one for the 2012 Accord and 2012 Crosstour, and another for the 2011-2012 Ridgeline. 

The 2012 Accord and Crosstour recall is the most worrisome of the two. According to a bulletin from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Accords and Crosstours from the 2012 model year may have been built with a faulty inflator for the side-curtain airbag on the passenger's side. As a result, those airbags may not deploy during a crash, seriously increasing the risk of injury to vehicle occupants.

While nearly every automaker reported brisk, upbeat sales numbers for the first month of 2012, General Motors didn't have much to cheer.

GM sales were off by 6 percent last month, while its crosstown rivals were up, strongly in the case of Chrysler, which reported a sales increase of 44 percent, while Ford rose 7 percent.

Also on the upturn were Toyota and Honda, both reporting solid sales increases nearly a year after the destructive March 11 earthquake in northern Japan devastated the country and one of its auto production bases.

Last Friday, the influential California Air Resources Board adopted new emission rules that will require carmakers to sell increasing number of zero-emission vehicles in the state, starting in 2018.

By 2025, fully 15.4 percent of the cars sold annually in California must be zero-emission vehicles--either battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, or plug-in hybrids that can run electric-only for at least several miles.

That would mean a total of 1.4 million plug-in or hydrogen vehicles would be on the state's roads in 2025, out of more than 30 million vehicles.

Each year, thousands of consumers answer surveys about cars and the people who sell them. Those studies -- like the ones we recently mentioned about brand loyalty and the shopping habits of men and women -- can tell us a lot about buyers, but for an insider's look at the auto industry, you need to chat with folks on the other side of the counter: the dealers. A new study from the National Automobile Dealers Association says its members are happiest in the company of Asian marques like Hyundai, Subaru, and Lexus.

The study was carried out in July and August 2011 and garnered responses from over 14,700 dealerships. According to a NADA press release, survey participants rated automakers in three areas: (1) "franchise value" (e.g. brand value, product offerings, etc.); (2) "automaker policy decisions that affect the dealership" (both directly and indirectly); and (3) "the automaker's field staff who visit dealerships". Taken in sum, those scores gauge how easy manufacturers make things for their brand representatives in the community so that they can get on with the business of selling and servicing cars. 

No one likes changing a flat tire. In fact, just storing the spare can be a problem: if it's inside the vehicle, it can take up valuable cargo space, and if it's kept outside, it may prevent you from using bike racks or other accessories. But AAA says that thanks to new fuel economy regulations, we may not have to worry about either of those things much longer, since spare tires could soon disappear altogether.

We've spilled a lot of ink discussing the new fuel economy rules handed down by the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. Those regulations will require average fuel economy to hit 34.1 mpgs by 2016 and 54.5 mpgs by 2025. 

So, you're in the market for a new car. You've skimmed through our extensive collection of news and reviews, and you're ready to hit the showroom. What should you expect? If you're a man, you might negotiate a slightly sweeter deal, however, your female friends will probably pay less because they've configured a more cost-efficient ride. That's according to new data from CarWoo.

We first mentioned CarWoo a little over a year ago. It's a website that allows shoppers to solicit competing offers from auto dealers, a little like Lending Tree does for home loans. So, you tell CarWoo what sort of vehicle you're looking for, and CarWoo asks dealerships in your area to make their best offer. (Interestingly, when CarWoo debuted, there was a fee to use it, which made us somewhat skeptical about its prospects. Now, that fee seems to have been removed, or it's been pushed deep into the sale transaction.)

Fueled by record worldwide sales of its Chevrolet brand, General Motors has achieved 2011 sales of 9.03 million units, surpassing both the 8.16 million sold by Volkswagen and the 7.9 million estimated by Toyota. Like other Japanese automakers, Toyota was impacted by inventory shortages caused by the twin disasters in Japan.

That puts GM back on top of global sales, which is a remarkable achievement given the automaker’s financial health in 2009. GM hasn't sold that many vehicles worldwide since 2007, prompting GM’s stock to rise slightly on the news. In early afternoon trading on January 19, the stock was selling at a high of $24.93 per share.

The Chevrolet brand accounted for 4.76 million sales worldwide last year, breaking sales records in 15 markets (including the United States). Chevrolet sales in the U.S. totaled nearly 1.78 million units, representing a growth of more than 13 percent compared to prior year.

Leading sales for Chevrolet globally was the Cruze compact sedan, which sold more than 670,000 units around the world last year. Global platforms, such as the Sonic and Spark contributed to Chevrolet's success, and the brand has big expectations in 2012 for the global launch of the 2013 Malibu.

GM picked up four-tenths of a point of market share worldwide last year, and now accounts for 11.9 percent of global vehicle sales. Its largest market is China, which made up 28.2 percent of sales last year (including joint ventures with Chinese partners), followed by the United States, which produced 27.7 percent of sales.

Back in November, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation announced new fuel-efficiency regulations affecting vehicles built through 2025. Many automakers and environmental groups have praised the guidelines, but dealers warn that they could boost the cost of new cars by as much as $5,000. We'll try to cut through the spin so you know what to expect down the road.

What are the new guidelines?