Is Premium Petrol Worth Buying?

AndreaE

Good Morning.

From a purely financial standpoint, is it worth me buying Tesco's new premium petrol for my Ford Focus?

http://www.tesco.com/momentum99/

Will the amount of extra miles I get warrant the extra cost or is it just hype?

Many thanks,

Andrea

vikingaero

Possibly.

Is your car turbocharged? Do you plan to keep the car for more than 3 years?

AndreaE

Not turbocharged, no - just a standard 1.6 engine.

It is about 9 years old now but I can't see me affording a replacement within the next 3 years.

Andrea

maninthestreet

AndreaE wrote: »

Not turbocharged, no - just a standard 1.6 engine.

It is about 9 years old now but I can't see me affording a replacement within the next 3 years.

Andrea

Then just use the standard unleaded petrol.

bryanb

maninthestreet wrote: »

Then just use the standard unleaded petrol.

Have you any facts to back this up please?

vikingaero

Why not try it and see? Fill up when your tank is low on fuel. It will probably be a few tankfuls before you get any benefit.

There are two camps here. Those who say that it is marketing and those who claim there are mileage benefits. I use any supermarket fuel in my company car simply because it's the cheapest and the car is on lease for 3 years. On my private cars I only use premium fuels because I keep the cars longer. There may be mileage benefits but I buy the premium fuel purely because the cars run smoother and the exhaust tailpipe soot is cleaner - a grey colour rather than black.

Strider590

Higher octane fuel is all about engine ignition timing, modern everyday UK cars vary this timing according to what fuel you use.
Older cars and highly tuned cars are the only one's that benefit from using this.
By "old", I call a car "old" when it's 20+ years, not 3.....


Don't waste your money.....

davetrousers

AndreaE wrote: »

From a purely financial standpoint, is it worth me buying Tesco's new premium petrol for my Ford Focus?

vikingaero wrote: »

Why not try it and see? Fill up when your tank is low on fuel. It will probably be a few tankfuls before you get any benefit.

The 99 Momentum Petrol is 5p per litre more expensive.

Tesco say you'll see benefits from 3 tanks.

Assuming a 50 litre tank: From empty each fill up will cost £2.50 more, so for 3 tanks it's £7.50. So as an experiment it wouldn't be that expensive.

Another thought, the £2.50 is just over 2 litres, how many miles will that normally get you (20 miles maybe) will you get more than 20 miles extra per tank?

Hammyman

bryanb wrote: »

Have you any facts to back this up please?

Plenty of tests done by magazines. I recall one done by Classic Ford magazine which put BP ahead of the others and showed Tesco Premium to have no benefits over its standard unleaded both performance and economy wise with the tests done over a range of carburetted, injected and turbo-charged vehicles with both manually adjusted timing and automatically adjusted.

However, even though BP was ahead, it was on BHP and it wasn't more economical to use it, i.e the extra MPG didn't cover the cost.

maninthestreet

bryanb wrote: »

Have you any facts to back this up please?

Fifth Gear on Channel 5 tested 'premuim' petrols a few years ago - unless using a high performance, turbo-charged vehicle, they found no benefit whatsoever from using these fuels.

Imp

I tried these high performance fuels about 3 years ago in my 1.4l Clio. I measured fuel consumption using the amount I filled up from the receipt and the distance I travelled betweenn filling. I did this before doing the test, while doing the test, and after the test.

My ecconomy decreased while I was running on high performance/high octane fuels and returned to its previous levels when I returned to normal unleaded. I don't think I altered my normally fuel conserving driving style (but can't prove it).