TORONTO -- Gas prices will probably have to hit about $1.30 a litre before Canadians dramatically change their vehicle buying habits, says the president of DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc., whose company is introducing a string of new cars and trucks.

"Another 20 cents, 30 cents a litre [on top of current prices] is what the economists tell us," Mark Norman said. "You get into the $1.30 kind of range, you start to raise questions. . . .

"We monitor it closely and we haven't seen a fundamental shift in demand," he said while flinging a new Chrysler 300 sedan through its paces at Downsview Park in Toronto yesterday.

DaimlerChrysler was showing off an array of vehicles including the new Crossfire sports car, the fuel-gulping Dodge Viper supersports car, the Dodge Durango full-size sport utility vehicle and the company's new mid-size passenger cars, which include a feature that improves fuel economy by shutting off half the cylinders in an eight-cylinder engine when the car is cruising on the highway.

"You see a bit of second-guessing behaviour, but not so much purchasing," Mr. Norman said of the impact the company is seeing of high gas prices.

"Should I drive or should I fly? Should I go away this weekend or stay home?"

The average price for a litre of regular gasoline across the country was 87.8 cents on Tuesday, as measured by consulting firm M.J. Ervin & Associates Inc. in Calgary. A year earlier it was 70.3 cents.

It's difficult for many Canadians to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles because they already own them.

Fuel-sipping subcompact and compact cars, compact pickup trucks and compact SUVs represent almost 40 per cent of the market.

That's a distinct difference from the U.S. market, where mid-sized cars and full-sized pickups are the two largest segments.

But Mr. Norman's comments helped fuel a debate in the industry and among economists.

That debate centres on whether Canadians have begun to change their vehicle buying habits because of the recent runup in gas prices -- particularly last month.

"I certainly believe that the oil price situation did have a significant impact," Bank of Nova Scotia economist Carlos Gomes said yesterday.

A slump in sales of full-sized sport utility vehicles last month provides some evidence, he said.

Sales of full-sized SUVs in Canada slid 28 per cent last month from year-earlier levels, he said, a sharp reversal from a 7-per-cent gain in the January-to-April period.

"Rising gasoline prices will take a greater toll on consumer pocketbooks and overall household spending in Canada than in the United States," he said.

Hang on a second, spokesmen for Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. and General Motors of Canada Ltd. responded yesterday.

"It's pretty tough to say that's due to gas," Ford Canada spokesman Chris Banks said. "I mean it's one month."

GM Canada spokesman Stew Low agreed that it's too soon to tell.

"It's not a big part of the market anyway," he said of full-sized SUVs.

Sales of such behemoths as GM's Chevrolet Suburban, Ford's Excursion and Expedition and the Sequoia sold by Toyota Canada Inc. fell to 1,655 in May from 2,311 a year earlier. That 28-per-cent drop was almost triple the 11-per-cent decline in overall sales.

But at 1,655 vehicles, full-sized SUVs represented just 1 per cent of total vehicle sales of 162,600 last month. And the Dodge Durango's sales jump of 95 per cent last month was the best performance of any vehicle sold by Mr. Norman's firm.

Meanwhile, sales of luxury SUVs rose and sales of more fuel-efficient compact SUVs fell.

"Some small segment of the market may show some impact, but if you look at the market as a whole, there is little evidence that consumers are changing their purchasing patterns because of high gas prices," said industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. in Richmond Hill, Ont.

There has been an increase in sales of subcompact cars this year, Mr. Norman acknowledged, but he said it has been driven in part by new products.

Those new products come mainly from GM Canada with some Chevrolet vehicles manufactured in South Korea and from Suzuki Canada Inc. with cars coming from the same South Korean plant from which GM Canada is importing.

The competition in the small-car end of the market will get more fierce later this year when Ford Canada comes out with a redesigned Focus and GM Canada replaces its aging Chevrolet Cavalier and Pontiac Sunfire with the new Cobalt and Pursuit.

Mr. Norman said he's pushing hard for Chrysler to bring a new small car to market soon to replace the Dodge SX 2.0. It's a renamed version of the Neon, which is also getting long in the tooth.

But even without a strong product in small cars, Chrysler has jumped ahead of Ford in Canada this year and into second place in the rankings behind GM.

It's partly on the strength of the 300 and the company's redesigned minivans -- the industry's first minivans with two rows of fold-into-the-floor seats.

The auto maker is also mounting a new marketing push. The company's Gold Medal Tour to get Canadians into its nine new vehicles is being taken to nine cities.