What's the Best "Brand" of Gasoline?

In the UK, Evo Magazine did some tests with 5 or so different brands of fuel (Shell VPower, BP Ultimate etc.) a little while back. The winner was surprisingly Tesco's 99 Octane fuel.
 
So have I. On most fuels my Mercedes gets about 11.5-12 l/100 km. On Shell fuel that drops to 10.5l /100 km. With fuel prices around 1.42 eur/ l that is quite a difference. Luckily, a very cheap Shell filling station (on par with most elcheapo noname stations) lies on my road to work, so I don't need to drive any extra kms for Shell fuel. On Shell V-Power it runs even better and i get an even better mileage, but not enough to justify the 5 ct/l premium.

Ouch that's pretty bad fuel economy, my brothers commodore (complete with buick pushrods 3.8L :p) gets about that
 
I've run into small problems with cheaper brands of gas. I have too much money invested into my cars to put crap gas in them. I only buy Chevron, BP, or Shell gas. I prefer Shell only because they sponsor Ferrari.
 
A foreman at my old job used Shell exclusively, he said it improved his gas mileage and cold starts. He could prove it too; if you had an hour or two to blow :lol:. He kept extensive records of everything work related.

Personally I buy whatever cheapest, within reason (I'm not going to drive halfway across town to save 3 cents a gallon, not while this Fairmont gets only 16mpg anyway.)
 
In a Civic? :blink:

hey if it gets me better mileage then why not? :D besides, i think the Octane ratings here are overrated...
 
I go to Petro-Canada. Not only does it have convenient locations around my house, but apparently Esso, which is the other common one, has really dirty fuel. For years I saw the hippy posters against Esso at uni so I never went there.

Plus I have the MasterCard from Petro which gives me an extra 2.5 cents off (total 5.5 cents off) and I collect double loyalty points. After spending something like $5g in gas I recently got a $25 gas card! But the card is cool, it has built-in PayPass.
 
I don't quite understand the quibbling over a few cents... Whether I buy the most expensive V-Power from Shell or the least expensive stuff from Caltex where they have that shopper-docket discount I'm still going to be paying roughly $100 to fill up... For that amount of money I might as well have the highest quality stuff from a brand that I have a bit of faith in.

$1.48 minus 4 cents per litre because of the Woolworths shopper-docket discount = $100.

$1.55 with no discount = $108.

For that measly eight bucks I'm getting a higher quality product, better performance, better economy and I don't have to mingle with those stingy Caltex savages. I guess I can understand that if you're as poor as... oh, lets say BlaRo..... Then the eight bucks might mean the difference between having Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner and having McDonald's for dinner... but for me it doesn't seem like that much money. Maybe that's the problem; $100 is so much damn money that people are tempted to save as much as they can... but when you're only saving a few cents what's the point?


Anyway, BP is pretty good, too but I got out of the habit of going there when I used to own a dark red car because it clashed with the bright green & yellow of the BP station. Yes, I'm serious.

I think you explained it yourself pretty well.

$8 difference multiplied out over approximately 26 top offs a year = $208, which is a significant amount of money.
 
I don't know about the rest of the world but here in sweden the companies buys gas from eachother... So I go with the cheapest..
 
I think you explained it yourself pretty well.

$8 difference multiplied out over approximately 26 top offs a year = $208, which is a significant amount of money.
Yeah but it's not much money to save over the course of a whole year... And it's not as tho you'll have that $208 in a lump sum at the end of the year to go buy an ounce with. It's more the kind of thing you'd notice from week to week - right after filling up on Friday you might notice the extra five or ten bucks in your wallet but I maintain that five or ten bucks isn't enough to worry about.

Plus, as has been mentioned, some of the higher quality petrols provide better economy so it has a chance of evening out in the end anyway.

But the main reason that I don't just go for the cheapest is because some of the crappy petrol stations dilute the petrol more than is legally allowed. Sometimes it just means you're getting slightly less petrol than you paid for but sometimes it's worse than that; If a lot of dilutent (is that the correct spelling of dilutent?) is added to the fuel you can end up damaging the engine over the course of several tanks. I've heard more than just a few stories of cars being written-off due to the engine damage being so severe and other cars needing new engines, fuel pumps, injectors etc.

I've never heard of that happening at a Shell or BP ... I'm not saying it's never happened - just that I've heard of it happening at Liberty, Caltex and several independent filling stations but never Shell or BP.

I guess I can understand it actually. If people are willing to take the (admittedly quite small) risk or if they just don't care then that's reason enough to go for the cheapest stuff they can find because five bucks is five bucks. Personally tho, I'd rather pay the extra five bucks for that little bit of peace of mind.

(plus, my car does actually run smoother on Shell so that's the main reason I use it)

I don't know about the rest of the world but here in sweden the companies buys gas from eachother... So I go with the cheapest..
It's the same way here. Most of the petrol comes from Shell or Mobil where I live. It's then sold to all the individual distributors like Caltex, Liberty, United etc.

Once they've got it they ad all their own branded additives to make it Premium or Super or V-Power or whatever... and the bad ones ad ethanol or nail polish remover or old used-up dishwater. :lol:
 
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In the UK, Evo Magazine did some tests with 5 or so different brands of fuel (Shell VPower, BP Ultimate etc.) a little while back. The winner was surprisingly Tesco's 99 Octane fuel.

Which (IIRC) is currently only available in the south-west of England? I think?

But yes, I get Tesco's normal 95 stuff. It's usually one of the cheapest fuels (and can be more so with the "5p off every litre of fuel" offers Tesco's / Sainsbury's often does), and tends to be Shell/Esso/wherever 95 stuff put into a Tesco station.

Plus Clubcard points by themselves pay for my Top Gear Mag subscription.


I think the main conclusion Evo came up with from that test, besides specific brands, is that it's important to use a busy station - as fuel that's been left sitting for some time was worse than "fresh" fuel.

Those in the UK, if price is your main concern over brand names, look at Petrol Prices. Shove in your postcode, it'll tell you the cheapest fuel nearby.

Austere said:
I don't quite understand the quibbling over a few cents...

There's a 15p difference between 95 octane and the special stuff here. When a fuelup is 80 litres, that's ?12 (or $24) a fillup. Which is, if you fill up once a fortnight, ?312 ($624) a year. Which is a lot, especially when your car isn't performance-minded and thus unlikely to notice the difference anyways.
 
There's a 15p difference between 95 octane and the special stuff here. When a fuelup is 80 litres, that's ?12 (or $24) a fillup. Which is, if you fill up once a fortnight, ?312 ($624) a year. Which is a lot, especially when your car isn't performance-minded and thus unlikely to notice the difference anyways.
Let me just clarify something; When I said 'cheap stuff' I didn't mean the lower octane stuff. I have to use high octane fuel in my car because it comes from the days when fuel was made from lead and had a million, billion octanes.

When I say 'cheap' I mean 'the cheapest you can find in the octane range you use'.

I'm not suggesting that people 'step-up' and fork over the money for higher octane because that would be a waste of money if your car doesn't need it. What I am saying is that if Shell are selling petrol at $1.56 and Caltex are selling the same octane fuel for $1.46 I'd go with the Shell because it's more betterer.
 
I guess I can understand that if you're as poor as... oh, lets say BlaRo..... Then the eight bucks might mean the difference between having Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner and having McDonald's for dinner... but for me it doesn't seem like that much money.


Well excuuuuuuuuse me, Mr. Moneybags, if I'm a broke-ass college student with no money and no motorized vehicle and no culinary palette outside of my measly dining hall meal plan while waiting for my job to start (got delayed 3 fucking weeks because of "security issues"! :wall:) because I don't drive a classic Mercedes-Benz and enjoy decently sunny weather and have a presumably funny accent and enjoy Aphex Twin way too much. Hey, man, you know what 8 bucks can buy you?! Seriously.

monopoly%20man.jpg


;)
 
I always get my gas from the local QT or Philips 66, I don't know if they are from different parent companies or not, but I've never noticed a difference. I don't think my Buick really cares as long as it's premium.
 
I use Shell Vpower 95 octane :D don't care whether its more expensive or even if it won't do much good on a stock engine. I just like the peace of mind that im getting nothing but the best, plus, it does better mileage too compared to regular shell unleaded :)

95 octane is not the best~:p
unless Phillipines runs the same octane rating system as the US~:lol:
 
For me myself I usually end up using BP, but I don't really have many choices... when I was in NZ there were only 91 and 95octane fuel, and only BP and Mobil can offer 98 octane. Ok my car was nothing special and people keep telling me the extra "octane" doesn't do shoot to my car, but I figure out they must've added different addictives into it when compared to the normal 91/95...

I'd much rather drink one cup less coffee to enjoy the benefits of cleaner running engine, smoother, more powerful, and more fuel economical too~

and geez I'd love it if Shell offered V-Power down under in NZ, but they didn't and the fuel they gave us was simply crap...
 
One of my parents cars, almost ten years ago, would knock like crazy with a certain brand of fuel. I can't for the life of me remember which one but the engine knock was unbelievable but with only one brand of gas and no others. I thought it was weird at the time.
 
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