In a year when everyone looked like a loser, there were a few small, but notable, victories and the eclipsing of several milestones. Indeed, the year of torment was also one of transformation.

A one-year sales plunge of more than 2.9 million vehicles hurt every automaker in the United States, but some won tiny victories in 2008 simply by being less awful than their rivals.

When the overall market crashes to 13.2 million from 16.2 million, any brand losing less than 18 percent actually gains market share. It's not exactly winning, but it's better than losing both volume and share.

ENLARGE Cars outsold light trucks for the first time since 2001. Toyota's Corolla was the top-selling sedan.

-- Toyota is the new brand champion, outselling Chevrolet by 1.84 million units to 1.79 million. Chevy sales fell 20.4 percent, but Toyota's dropped just 14.7 percent.

-- Cars (7,042,234 units) outsold light trucks (6,205,190) for the first time since 2001. In a year when gasoline prices rose well above $4 a gallon, trucks lost 25 percent of their volume from 2007, while cars fell only 10.7 percent.

-- Nissan Division sold more vehicles than Dodge to join No. 1 Toyota and No. 4 Honda as the third Japanese brand among the top five U.S. marques.

-- Hyundai division passed three domestic marques — GMC, Chrysler and Jeep — to become the No. 7 U.S. brand. Hyundai sales fell 14 percent, but the other three each lost 25 to 38 percent.

ENLARGE Ford's F-series pickup fell to its lowest sales level since 1992 but remained America's top seller.

-- Kia outsold Pontiac for the first time, 273,397 to 267,348.

-- Several position changes occurred among premium brands, all of them imports passing domestics: Acura outsold Buick, Infiniti topped Lincoln, and Land Rover outsold Hummer.

-- Honda's U.S. market share surpassed 10 percent for the first time, with a modest single-digit sales decline in a ghastly market pushing its market share to 10.8 percent.

There were some close calls. Chrysler LLC (Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep) barely held off American Honda Motor Co. (Honda, Acura) to remain the No. 4 automaker in the United States. And although the BMW brand closed the gap on Lexus, it fell about 11,000 units short of becoming the best-selling U.S. luxury marque.

ENLARGE Boosted by the Civic and Fit, Honda's U.S. market share surpassed 10 percent for the first time.

Among all the individual winners and losers, the 2008 sales collapse has hurt the Detroit 3 worse than most of their competitors. Chrysler LLC, the automaker most dependent on light trucks, lost 30 percent of its volume in 2008. Ford Motor Co. did slightly better than General Motors but still was down 21.8 percent.

As a result, the Detroit 3 share of the U.S. market fell below 50 percent for the first time — to 47.5 percent from 51.1 percent in 2007.

And fewer than three of every four vehicles sold in the United States were built in North America. Imported European, Japanese and Korean vehicles captured 25.5 percent of total sales in 2008, up from 23.2 percent a year earlier. U.S. sales of North America-built vehicles fell 2.5 million, to less than 10 million vehicles.