A while ago, when the price of fuel where I lived increase again, I thought of trying out regular unleaded. Most modern cars today have sophisticated fuel management and knock sensors to cater to changes to octane rating. For your info, the price difference between regular and premium where I live is only about US 5 cents a liter. Still, I wanted to know if what the experts say were true. After all, everyone is an expert today unless you try it out for yourself. I drive a 2002 Nissan Sentra 1.8 GXE. In other markets it is also known as the Pulsar. It is no high performance tarmac burning rocket. Just a family sedan.

So in went the regular grade fuel. Since it was an experiment, I did not fill the tank to the brim. Just half tank. I figured if there is going to be any major knocking etc, I could fill up with premium and at least minimise the damage.

Well while there wasn’t any knocking, straight away, I could feel the difference. There was less power when accelerating and the car felt sluggish to the accelerator pedal most of the time. So much for what the experts say. I can’t say if your car will perform better or worse, but after this short experiment, I went back to premium.

Several months later, I went the other direction. Shell sells an extra premium V-Power Racing that is supposedly performs better than premium unleaded. I normally don’t use Shell fuel because I felt that power was down compared to other brands. The reason I went to try out this V-Power Racing was I wanted this

You see, Shell in Ferrari colabaration in Formula 1, thought why not sell some toys like McD and get customers into their gas stations. So I got suckered into trying out their fuels. With V-Power Racing, I only need to pay about USD 1.15 for 1 model of plasticky Ferrari model pictured above.

Anyway, the moment I left the gas station, I could feel the car more eager to go. It was more responsive throughout. I can’t say if it gave better fuel economy to justify the extra cost without a side by side comparison where conditions are controlled. So, there you have it, my experiment with different grades of fuel. My conclusions, I’m sticking with premium fuel because, the V-Power just cost too much and regular could be detrimental in the long run. but try it for yourself. Perhaps your car can handle regular fuel better.

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