CHICAGO -

Cars.com believes the recent 10-percent increase in fuel prices has consumers thinking back to 2008 when prices at the pump shot above $4 per gallon and dealers couldn’t keep compacts and hybrids in inventory.

An analysis of user search data shows Cars.com has seen nearly a 70-percent surge in interest for hybrid vehicles and a 21-percent increase in compact vehicles. Those spikes came between Feb. 9 and March 8.

Meanwhile, Cars.com discovered vehicles perceived as gas-guzzlers like SUVs and pickup trucks saw declines in interest over the same period.  Pickup interest is off by 10 percent, while SUV interest is down by 9 percent.

Drilling down into its data further, Cars.com found as a percentage of total new-vehicle searches, SUV searches have dropped from a 27.7 percent share in December to 25.1 percent in February. At the same time, the site said compact car searches have increased from 9.7 percent to 11.7 percent during the same time frame.

As a percentage of new-vehicle search traffic, hybrid and compact car searches in February were the highest Cars.com has seen since August 2009 for compacts and November 2009 for hybrids.

“What’s most interesting about the data is how quickly car buyers have shifted their search habits compared with the same time gas prices started increasing in 2008,” noted Joe Wiesenfelder, senior editor at Cars.com.

“Our searches tend to forecast sales trends and I’d say that based on these numbers, hybrids and compacts will be hot sellers in the months to come,” Wiesenfelder surmised.

Back in 2008, Cars.com recollected that its user searches showed a dramatic shift in preferences when gas prices rose past $4 a gallon. The data also suggested an inverse relationship between light trucks and more fuel-efficient cars and hybrids.

In July 2008 when gas prices peaked at a $4.09 retail average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline, pickups and SUVs collectively made up 27.4 percent of all Cars.com’s new-vehicle searches. That’s compared with 36.2 percent in February 2008.

On the other hand, site analysts noted hybrids and compact cars moved from 15.4 percent of search to a 26.4 percent share.

Cars.com thinks its data also suggests that $4 a gallon gas may indeed be the tipping point to more fuel-efficient options — either truck/SUV buyers opt for something more fuel efficient or drop out of the new-vehicle market altogether.

The site believes the tipping point seems to work the other way, too. As gas prices dipped below $4 a gallon in August 2008, there was an immediate drop in hybrid searches — from 5.6 percent of search to 3.6 percent of new-car searches. Hybrid searches continued to decline throughout that time, hitting a lull when gas prices increased and then stayed stable around $2.75 from November 2009 to November 2010.

Analysts said hybrid searches maintained levels at a quarter of those seen in July 2008. Cars.com surmised that hybrid sales have struggled overall, except for Toyota Prius, which still made up close to 60 percent of all hybrid sales last month. 

“It seems likely that 2011’s summer will see even higher gas prices, and as demand for hybrids and compacts continues to rise, so will prices,” Wiesenfelder offered.

“People looking to buy a car in the very near future should expect thinner inventories of these hot-selling models, and dealerships much less willing to negotiate on price,” he continued. “The best time to buy is now before gas prices rise even further.”