At Cycle Imports on McCully Street, the latest container shipment of mopeds sold out in five days. The same buy-'em-before-they're-gone phenomenon happens at Cycle City on Nimitz Highway, where mopeds and scooters sell out within 10 days of arrival. Ditto at South Seas motorcycle and scooter dealership, where a single scooter sat on the showroom floor last week.

"This whole year has been nonstop selling," said George Burmeister, owner of Cycle Imports Hawaii, who has seen business grow as gasoline prices rise. Hawai'i motorists, fed up with with $3-plus gasoline and tight parking, are either ditching cars in favor of a two-wheeler or adding one to their garages.

Isle residents are taking a look at mopeds and scooters, along with motorcycles and bicycles, in increasing numbers, judging by rising state and county registration numbers. Hawai'i's nation-leading average gasoline price was $3.34 a gallon for regular on Thursday, according to the American Automobile Association. That was 53 cents more than the national average.

Island drivers are paying about 58 percent more for a gallon of regular versus three years ago. Last year, the number of motorcycle and scooter registrations rose 8.4 percent statewide, more than twice the rate of other motor vehicle registrations, which climbed 3.8 percent. Moped ownership is rising even faster, with registrations on O'ahu jumping 16 percent last year, according to the Honolulu Motor Vehicle Branch.

"The only time I take the car now is when I go play golf," said Gerald Robinson, a 67-year-old retiree who bought a moped three years ago as gas prices crept up from $2 a gallon. He uses the moped to pick up small items at the store, pay bills and run errands. He leaves the family's Buick LaSabre to his wife.

"I don't know why anyone would want a car, especially if you live in the city," the Kaimuki resident said. "It's more trouble than anything else trying to find a place to park."

He fills his 1.7-gallon tank once a week and estimates he gets as much as 70 miles to a gallon. At last week's prices, he was paying less than $6 a week at his gas- station visits. That compares to a $50-plus fill-up faced by someone with a 16-gallon tank.

At South Seas Honda Yamaha BMW Ducati, sales manager Bill Kato is seeing a more diverse customer base and hearing different questions than a few years ago. More people are coming in to check out scooters, the larger, more powerful cousins of mo-peds. While mopeds generally have a 50cc engine and a top speed of about 35 mph, more muscular scooters have enough horsepower to keep up with H-1 Freeway traffic and carry a driver and a passenger.

Both offer the ease of a "step-through" design and automatic transmission. Fuel economy for new models generally ranges from 60 to 80 miles a gallon. The state doesn't require vehicle insurance or a special license for mopeds. Both are required for scooters and motorcycles.

"You see a whole lot of people coming in asking questions," said Kato, who pilots a 250cc Honda Helix scooter to work on days he doesn't have to drop off his son at school. The demographics have broadened from the days when only students rode mopeds, or when Hollywood star Bing Crosby glamorously zipped around Waikiki about 70 years ago, becoming one of the first people to ride a scooter here. It was the latest thing at California resorts, Crosby reported.

These days, it's not unusual to see a 50-year-old in Kato's showroom, inquiring about what licensing is required, insurance and mileage.

"They're coming in from a cost perspective," Kato said. "Business is booming."

Nationally, the news is the same. There was an almost 20 percent increase in scooter sales in the first half of 2006, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council statistics.

"Scooters have been the fastest-growing segment of the market in the past several years," said Mike Mount, spokesman for the Irvine, Calif.-based group. "The increases in fuel prices have been driving some of those sales."

The council's research also shows a more diverse mix of scooter riders. The median age of riders rose to 46 in 2003 from 26 in 1990.

Accompanying that was a rise in retirees riding scooters, roughly tripling to 22 percent of riders.

"They're buying a lot of bikes," said Cycle Imports' Burmeister. "They're feeling not so confined and delegated to the bus."

There also is the ease of parking and use. On a recent lunch hour, four mopeds were parked on a spacious walkway across from Ala Moana's Makai Marketplace food court, their drivers having just zipped up and hopped off. Meanwhile, cars circled the parking lot hunting for spaces.

Shawn Beckwith, sales manager of Cycle City on Nimitz Highway, said he's seeing buyers of pricey condominiums in Kaka'ako come in and check out scooters for travel within five miles of their home. He said he believes there will be more of those buyers as more condominiums open next year.

"You're seeing quite a bit of older, 35- to 55-year-old customers, investing in these to run around."

Beckwith said scooter sales are rising by a double-digit percentage, or slightly faster than his motorcycle sales. At Cycle City, the mopeds start at about $1,500. The most expensive scooter, a top-of-the-line Vespa ("the Audi of scooters," said Beckwith) costs $9,000.

Bill Contes, a 37-year-old Wilhelmina Rise resident, has used his car sparingly over the past year and a half, parking it in favor of riding a moped. Contes is looking to buy a scooter so he can ferry a passenger around and carry more cargo as he travels to work in Hawai'i Kai and goes to the gym. The largest scooters generally have enough room under the seat for two grocery bags.

He likes the cost savings "plus the wind-in-your-hair feel" of riding a moped. Yet he knows the hazards of being outnumbered by larger, heavier vehicles on the road.

"You look to the side and rear-end somebody, you're dead," said Contes, who took a motorcycle safety course at Leeward Community College to learn defensive driving skills on a two-wheeler.

So far this year, four moped riders have died in traffic accidents on O'ahu, according to the Honolulu Police Department. That compares with seven moped-rider fatalities by this time last year, and one in 2004.

Other drawbacks to riding scooters and mopeds include getting wet during rainstorms, and theft.

There's still plenty of demand, though. Ross Montgomery, who helps distribute Taiwanese-made mopeds at Cycle Sports Hawaii, said he's been out of stock for two months while he waits for a batch of mopeds that meet stringent Environmental Protection Agency emission standards that went into effect earlier this year.

"People want something quick, cheap and easy where they don't want insurance," he said. "My dealers are constantly asking me when my mopeds are coming in."

Registration numbers for scooters and mopeds from the state Data Book and the Honolulu Motor Vehicle Branch show their increasing popularity.

Reach Greg Wiles at gwiles@honoluluadvertiser.com.