Americans have fallen out of love with the gas guzzler.

A tank of petrol now typically costs more than $100 (£50) for a big SUV – compared with just $30 five years ago – and dealers can barely give away the giant Ford Expeditions, Dodge Rams and Chevy Suburbans cluttering up their lots. Demand for small and hybrid cars is soaring, with vehicles being sold for more than their advertised prices.

By some accounts the wholesale auction prices of small-engined cars have jumped by as much as 40 per cent as dealers fight to buy them in time for today’s federal holiday – Memorial Day – when many American families traditionally shop for new vehicles.

Chrysler – which owns the fuel-inefficient Jeep brand – has gone so far as to give customers credit cards that guarantee petrol prices at $2.99 a gallon for three years. Its scheme is called “Let’s Refuel America”.

Ford has taken a more radical step: with the market share of SUVs having plunged from 14 to just 9 per cent in 12 months, the company will build 350,000 fewer vehicles this year, a move that will almost certainly involve more job losses and plant closures, while delaying profitability.

Ford is also planning to bring the Fiesta to the US later this year – the first time that the small hatchback will have been sold in America since the 1970s oil crisis.

“We saw a real change in the demand in pickups and SUVs in the first two weeks of May,” Alan Mulally, the chief executive, said. “It seems to us we have reached a tipping point.”

With European-style diesel engines unavailable on most noncommercial vehicles in America – they fail the crucial smog test in California, although newer technology might soon change that – Americans have shown the most interest in hybrid cars that combine electric and petrol power.

Hybrids have the added advantage of emitting reduced quantities of carbon dioxide when driven in the city, although they have suffered an image problem thanks to the perceived sanctimony of owners. The TV show South Park lampooned hybrids as creating dangerous levels of “smug”.

Hybrid cars account for only 3 per cent of US car sales but orders are increasing so dramatically – they were up by 58 per cent last month – that manufacturers can hardly keep up. There is a 30-day waiting list in Los Angeles for the Toyota Prius, which can do 48 mpg in the city (the equivalent of 57 mpg in larger UK gallons). Every Prius that arrives at a Los Angeles dealership is sold within three days, according to a recent survey by the Los Angeles Times. As a result, dealers are adding mark-ups of as much as $3,000 a car.

It is the same story with SUV hybrids. “It could be a month or two before we get one in,” a salesman at Toyota’s Santa Monica dealership told The Times, when asked about a Highlander Hybrid SUV that does about 18 mpg in the city. “They sell before they even arrive.” The hybrid Highlander costs $50,000, similar to the price of a far more prestigious but chronically oil-addicted Land Rover LR3 (called a Discovery in Britain). The so-called “sticker shock” is made worse for many motorists because the value of trade-in SUVs has fallen by 8 per cent since last year.

Americans hoping for a longer-term solution to oil costs have few options, other than buying an old car and having it converted to run on electricity by one of many custom workshops. So-called “plug-in” hybrids, which use lithium-ion batteries and can handle a daily commute between charges – thus eliminating the need for petrol – are still suffering development problems, with the much-hyped Chevy Volt not expected in showrooms until 2010.

The Silicon Valley electric car-maker Tesla Motors – which uses Lotus body parts from Britain – recently opened its first dealership in Los Angeles but has nothing to sell because only four production models of its much-hyped 139 mpg sports car have been built. The Tesla Roadster can allegedly accelerate from 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds and go 220 miles on a single charge, but problems with the transmission have forced the company to delay mass production until December.

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