Premium Petrol, Worth The Extra Cost?

[camdave]

I do not want to start a “Are supermarket fuels rubbish” debate; I ran my Mazda Premacy 1.8 auto petrol for over 200,000 miles using Tesco fuel achieving good MPG and with no problems!

We currently have an Auris 1.6 and a Verso 1.8 and my question is, has anyone had experience of comparing a ‘premium’ fuel such as Tesco Momentum 99 with standard 95 RON in a non high performance car and did they see any real benefit in MPG or performance?

[Uncle Wang]

I used it once a few years ago by mistake on my 2.0 Bora and again about a year ago on my 118i and can't say I noticed any difference apart from a slightly lighter wallet!

[Speed_Chaser]

If you use higher octane it should burn better, and in the end the consumption is different aswell.Finally the price is the same as you can drive more with same amount of fuel. I did read about this somewhere, but not sure if it is really true.

Also in my country 95 comes with 10% of ethanol, but 98 has 5% of ethanol in it. Some reliable sources state that so much ethanol can cause damage even to new engines. And I know for sure that the more ethanol, the higher is consumption. This cuts the price difference obviously.

[P34RC3]

In my eyes no. I ran my focus st on it for ages and that cost me a absolute fortune. It made slight increase in response but not worth the money it cost. I use bp standard fuel on my auris and it's fine. I used to user fuel additive but can't really tell the difference. Save your money or if u want a slight improvement get your self a k&n air filter and save cash on never forking out for a air filter again. Well at least for 100k miles lol

[Uncle Buck]

When I tried Shell V-Power in my Nissan Almera 1.8 instead or regular unleaded, the only difference I noticed was a slightly better response. By that I mean the engine seemed to respond quicker & feel a little stronger torque-wise. MPG didn't seem to change much except on a longer run, where it would get maybe 1-2 MPG more on average compared to normal unleaded.

[Cyker]

Unless the engine has knock sensors, probably not. Modern petrol cars seem a lot less sensitive to fuel-type than modern diesel cars!

The 'proper' petrols like yer Shell and yer esso's tend to be better than supermarket fuel just because they have a better blend of additives, but there's absolutely no point in getting higher octane petrol unless the car's been designed to take advantage of it.

[camdave]

Thanks for all the replies.

Having used Momentum 99 in both cars for the past few months I can't say there has been any marked change in performance or MPG. I think I will ignore the marketing hype, go back to 95 RON and save the money.