HTML and XSLT questions

Hey I got some quick questions on HTML and XSLT.

Techincally is using <br /> in HTML (XHTML form) considered bad practice or technically wrong? Should <br> be used when considering a html break tag (same goes for the likes of input).

My question in regards to XSLT is this:

If you do this in the tbody tags of a table in the body of html

	   <xsl:for-each select="./catalogue/cars/car">
	          <tr>
	          <td><xsl:value-of select="carID" /></td>
	          <td><xsl:value-of select="typeID" /></td> 
	          <td><xsl:value-of select="age" /></td> 
	          <td><xsl:value-of select="milesOnClock" /></td> 
		  <td><xsl:value-of select="price" /></td> 
	          </tr>
	     </xsl:for-each>

vs
in tbody

<xsl:apply-templates select="./catalogue/carTypes/carType" /> 

and this outside the closing html tag

  <xsl:template match="carType"><tr>
  <td><xsl:value-of select="./typeID" /></td>
  <td><xsl:value-of select="./typeName" /></td>
  <td><xsl:value-of select="./engineSize" /></td>
  <td><xsl:value-of select="./numberOfDoors" /></td>
  </tr>
  </xsl:template>

which would be better practice/deemed more correct or efficient?
I have an exam in this tomorrow and the lecture can be slightly pedantic about these things

The 2 last quotes are from the same document