Supermarket fuel v the rest

IanMSpencer

motorguy wrote: »

And again, you need to differentiate between premium brand fuel versus supermarket brand fuel, eg BP standard unleaded versus Tesco standard unleaded and "premium fuel" such as BP Ultimate.

Maybe you can see why i was trying to keep the topic on diesel only....

Which is exactly why I worded my posts using "octane" - my whole point was people not realising that they were not comparing like with like when comparing Tesco's Cheap as Chips Premium vs ShellMaxVPlusSuperPowerUltimateBP. It's not my fault that petrol suppliers misuse the word premium for the base product.

There is no point trying to police a thread titled "Supermarket fuel vs the rest" and deciding what is and is not appropriate based on your own interpretation of the question. The whole subject is snake oil, misunderstandings and talking at cross purposes.

I was observing one reason why some people think that there is no difference (as they are correctly comparing like with like they only see marginal differences) and others are rightly comparing ordinary and high octane petrol and seeing a difference which they have a view on whether it is value for money and others believe there is a difference based just on a few special additives when they don't understand the difference in energy delivered by higher octane fuel. In other words, you can legitimately hold the view that there is no significant difference between supermarket fuel and branded fuel yet accept that the added value branded fuels do have something extra to offer.

I think at times it is appropriate to point out why people come to different views when it is based on misunderstandings, and this is useful information rather than a divergence.

AdrianC

IanMSpencer wrote: »

It's not my fault that petrol suppliers misuse the word premium for the base product.

They aren't misusing it.

There are three unleaded standards - 91RON Unleaded, 95RON Premium Unleaded, 97+RON Super Unleaded.

We simply don't get the base 91RON product in the UK, and never have. It's more or less been phased out elsewhere now, but was reasonably widespread in Germanic countries, in particular. It's also common further afield - Australia, for a start.

And, yes, I do mean 91RON - I'm not getting confused with the US RON+MON/2 octane standard.

IanMSpencer

AdrianC wrote: »

They aren't misusing it.

There are three unleaded standards - 91RON Unleaded, 95RON Premium Unleaded, 97+RON Super Unleaded.

We simply don't get the base 91RON product in the UK, and never have. It's more or less been phased out elsewhere now, but was reasonably widespread in Germanic countries, in particular. It's also common further afield - Australia, for a start.

And, yes, I do mean 91RON - I'm not getting confused with the US RON+MON/2 octane standard.

It was a deliberate choice when the old 2, 3, 4, and 5 star fuel names were dropped when we went unleaded - back in the day the idea that super was better than premium caused confusion and was complained about - but as you say, in part it relates to wording that could be used across Europe. It was a misuse to come up with a vague set of terms that did not have a proper relative scale.

In my mind, I feel that premium suggests better than super, but then that might be because super is a common word and I didn't think Supercar was as good as Fireball XL5 or Stingray, the premium Century 21 products.


Anyway, daft idea dropping the nice and simple star system that everyone understood - we wouldn't be having this conversation now! (And, before anyone suggests it, to distinguish from leaded, they could have used a different symbol).

AdrianC

IanMSpencer wrote: »

It was a deliberate choice when the old 2, 3, 4, and 5 star fuel names were dropped when we went unleaded

5* and 3* were long dead by the time unleaded came out.
Unleaded's arrival mean 2* disappeared. Most places had pumps capable of three fuels - 2*/4*/diesel became UL/4*/diesel.

In 89/90, when unleaded started to become mainstream, I was a student with a 2cv that was very happy on 2*, so I remember spending time hunting for the rapidly-vanishing stuff...

Quick google - 5* was discontinued by Shell in March 1978...
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1978/85/five-star-petrol

Joe_Horner

kmb500 wrote: »

Fifth Gear has tested this, you can find the video on youtube. Think they used a Golf GTI and they did demonstrate that Shell V Power and BP Ultimate produced a couple more whp / bhp than supermarket petrol.

That'd be the Fifth Gear starring Tiff Needell, long-time endorser of Ametech [STRIKE]Snake Oil[/STRIKE] "Restore"? :rotfl:

IanMSpencer

Returning to the confusion, I do think the industry (and regulators) have a responsibility to ensure that consumers actually understand what they are buying.

Being a child of the 50s, I was brought up with the star system and it was very clear what was going on, you had fuel with different qualities and the car was designated to use such and such a fuel, like my dad's Morris 1100 ran on 3 star, Rover's were exciting things that ran on 5 star, and in the 60s plenty of cars ran on 2 star. People understood that there was something different about the fuels and cars needed to run on a particular fuel, even if they didn't understand what was in it. While there was branding and they suggested that there were differences ("Go well with Shell") it was quite clear what you were buying. People did trust different brands and felt that some worked better than others, but that was based on comparing like with like.

Talking of Shell, they were famous for introducing Formula Shell - a go faster product that did indeed make things go faster, including valves and they had to withdraw it and compensate owners. They also lost an ASA ruling on misleading claims of improved fuel consumption of their "ordinary" fuels in 2011. So it is not surprising in the soup of misleading information from manufacturers that motorists are misled as to the benefits of these products or alternatively highly cynical of claims in this area.

A similar problem comes with the use of different colour schemes on fuel pumps - for example the Ultimate scheme where the normally black diesel is blue. It can be really confusing at a multi-nozzle station to work out what you are buying - just on one brand, especially at dodgy stations where they have some pumps which conveniently do not have the base product.

So, if people can't even be certain if they are buying a basic or premium product by looking at a pump in the same station (especially with an unfamiliar brand - remember the BP Ultimate debacle a while back where people even confused diesel and petrol due to their pump colouring), then people making comparisons across brands are understandably going to struggle to know if what they are buying is a truly comparable product.

In that context, the fact that claims for the special diesel additive products are so weak (essentially about the only benefit is that there MAY be improved longevity due to cleaning properties) suggests that the manufacturers don't really believe there is much benefit to their products except their own profits.

AdrianC

IanMSpencer wrote: »

Being a child of the 50s, I was brought up with the star system

So it's been defunct for half of your life, almost all of your motoring life - and that's ignoring the decade beforehand that it was on the way out. 5* was phased out two-thirds of your life ago...

Next up: Decimal money is SOOOOO hard!
(5* was phased out 7 years after decimalisation - how long ago does 2010 seem?)

motorguy

IanMSpencer wrote: »

I think at times it is appropriate to point out why people come to different views when it is based on misunderstandings, and this is useful information rather than a divergence.

Agreed - which is what i've done too - however those misunderstandings have muddied the waters on the thread.

I'm not "policing" the thread btw, just pointing out we've now diverged into a whole other arena and a whole other layer of misused terminology...

motorguy

AdrianC wrote: »

Important bit highlighted.

But, yes - there's two separate questions being confused.
1 - "Petrol retailer" brand versus supermarket brand - this is where the additive/detergent question comes in.
2 - 95RON Premium Unleaded vs 98+RON Super Unleaded.

For "premium" diesel products, point 2 does not apply.

^^^^^^^^^^^

This. Exactly.

motorguy

IanMSpencer wrote: »

So, if people can't even be certain if they are buying a basic or premium product by looking at a pump in the same station (especially with an unfamiliar brand - remember the BP Ultimate debacle a while back where people even confused diesel and petrol due to their pump colouring), then people making comparisons across brands are understandably going to struggle to know if what they are buying is a truly comparable product.

Hence why we were specifically talking about the difference between supermarket branded diesel such as Tesco and premium brand diesel such as BP.

IanMSpencer wrote: »

In that context, the fact that claims for the special diesel additive products are so weak (essentially about the only benefit is that there MAY be improved longevity due to cleaning properties) suggests that the manufacturers don't really believe there is much benefit to their products except their own profits.

There are cleaning agents in each brand type which may well help an older, clogged up engine to be a little bit cleaner, or a clean engine to stay clean. But as the various companies dont actually tell you whats in there, you've no way of knowing.

The issue being consistency if say, you fill with BP one week and Shell the next.

Personally, i use supermarket brand diesel but add a Millers diesel additive per tank, that way i get consistency