NEW YORK, June 2: More Americans are buying Japanese and Korean made fuel- efficient cars as the petrol prices at the gas pumps rose to more than $3.50 in many states, a newspaper report said on Friday.

Sales figures reported on Thursday showed that Toyota, Honda and other Asian manufacturers claimed a record 40 per cent of the American market in May 2006, when sales of fuel-efficient vehicles like Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic and Hyundai Sonata all rose 20 per cent or more compared with May 2005, the report said.

For Detroit companies, which have continued to aggressively market their costly new

sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and pickup trucks despite the high gas prices, market share last month dropped to 52.9 per cent — their second-lowest in history, said the New York Times.

Executives at Honda, which has long focused on fuel economy and does not sell any vehicles with engines bigger than six cylinders, said they expected to continue winning market share as long as gas prices stay high said the newspaper report. Honda reported an 11.4 per cent increase in May, pushed by both the Civic and the new model “Fit”, a subcompact that went on sale in April.

Richard Colliver, an executive vice president of American Honda, told the NYT the Fit was staying on showroom lots for an average of just eight days.

Some dealers, Mr Colliver said, reported seeing customers follow delivery trucks into their showroom lots in hopes of

nabbing a Fit, something that has not happened since the original Civic went on sale in the 1970s.

“My feeling is that it’s going to continue as people see what the price of gas is doing to their disposable income,” Mr Colliver said.

In all, industry sales for May dropped 4.6 per cent compared with 2005, according to Ward’s InfoBank. Car sales rose nearly 2 per cent, but sales of SUV’s, pickups and minivans fell 10.2 per cent.

Toyota, the company causing the most trouble for Detroit, took a record 15.9 per cent of the American market in May, when its sales rose 12.3 per cent from 2005.