In Detroit, the Motor City, service stations on many busy corners ran out of gas late last week, in scenes reminiscent of the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s. In Chicago and Milwaukee, motorists moan about pump prices that are now the highest anywhere in the lower 48 states.

The price of a gallon of premium unleaded gas was nearly $2.50 this weekend in downtown Chicago. In Michigan, average gas prices leapt 27.1 cents last week, setting two records: one for the largest weekly jump since the American Automobile Association of Michigan began tracking gas prices in 1973, and the other for the highest statewide gas average - $2.01 for self-serve unleaded fuel.

Just a year ago, gasoline prices in the region averaged about half that much."How many four-letterwords can I use?" asked Lionel Robin, a textile salesman, as he pumps gas into his 1992 Jaguar Vandenplas at a Chicago-area Amoco station Friday. "You eat through $10 bills like it's nothing."The surge in fuel prices across the Midwest, capped last week by spot shortages in the Detroit area, arises from a convergence of problems: an ill-timed pipeline break in Michigan; snags in producing and distributing the clean-burning gas that is required as of June 1 to meet federal clean-air mandates; and the campaign by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to raise world crude-oil prices.

These factors may all be temporary, economists and industry officials say. But Midwesterners are fuming, auto-industry executives are fretting, and federal and state officials are vowing action against price gougers.On Friday, President Clinton expressed concern about the Midwest gasoline crunch during an interview on the NBC "Today" program, and late Friday, the Federal Trade Commission said it is launching a formalinvestigation into gasoline prices.

The commission is expected to vote within several days whether to subpoena specific business records.Calls for investigations into possible price gouging by refining companies have infuriated oil-industry officials. "Our companies are damn mad about this," says Edward Murphy, the American Petroleum Institute's general manager for refining and marketing. "We have been unfairly maligned, and consumers have been ill-advised about what is going on."

Meanwhile, soaring prices are sending ripples throughout the Midwest economy. Sales of gas-guzzling motor homes are beginning to slow after booming through the 1990s. Farmers, already battered by low grain prices, are seeing the cost of fueling things such as their tractors skyrocket.At corner gas stations, eye-popping outlays for a fill-up are starting to rattle the region's what-me-worry attitude toward gas-guzzling rides - potentially bad news for Detroit's Big Three auto makers.

Ford Motor Co. employee Stokes Hendrix onFriday paid $40 to bring his Lincoln Navigator's tank to just three-quarters full. When he bought the big luxury sport-utility vehicle three months ago, gas wasn't a concern, he said. "Now," he said, "I want to give it back."

For weeks, as gasoline prices have climbed, executives of Detroit's Big Three auto makers have argued that sales of their high-profit sport-utility vehicles wouldn't be hurt significantly because supplies were plentiful, and flush consumers could handle the extra dollars for a fill-up.

Now, industry officials are conceding that $2-a-gallon gasoline could make a difference. In an internal memo written last week, General Motors Corp.'s chief market analyst Paul Ballew noted that "on the margin, truck sales appear to have been affected in the Midwest, where prices have been highest." Mr. Ballew said that decline isn't likely to have a significant impact on the nationwide shift from cars to trucks.

Larry White, general manager of Marty Feldman Chevrolet in the Detroit suburb of Novi,Mich., said he generally sells 20 to 25 Suburbans and Tahoes a month. He said the dealership has only sold three so far in June. If the trend continues, he said, the dealership might order 25 of the big SUVs in September instead of 30. "That's a good possibility, but it's too early to tell," he said.

The possibility that gas prices could trip the booming Midwest economy just in time for the presidential election has gotten Washington's attention.Democrats are worried that presidential candidate Al Gore might get tagged with at least some of the blame for high gasoline prices. In Milwaukee recently, the vice president promised a "full investigation" into whether "price gouging" was to blame for high gas prices. Political concerns were likely a motivation for President Clinton's weighing in on the issue.