The Ford F-series pickup trucks are the best-selling vehicles in America.  The top-selling sedan, the Toyota Camry, put up barely half the 750,000 pickups Ford sold last year.

Pickups are big, often ugly, hard to get in an out of, and they are generally guzzlers.  In spite all that, we love them.

General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, the big three American auto companies, are now pushing new models that offer greater efficiency. 

Car critic Susan Carpenter says she thinks the companies are on the right track. Ford's new F-150 features a new, much lighter body made of aluminum — not steel.  The car is paired with a still-powerful, but more efficient, engine. Chrysler's Ram trucks are now offered with an option to run them on natural gas, and Chevy has a new model of its Colorado with green features as well.