Do you really need it?
Feb 06 '00 (Updated Apr 07 '00) Write an essay on this topic.
Honestly, I would say no, you dont need it unless you have a high-performance sports car. I drive a 4 cylinder POS, and it doesn't make any difference if I use gas from someplace like Sunoco or Mobil, or I go to one of those value-gas places, forget about reg -vs- premium. However, for cars like Mustang Cobras, BMW M3s, and things along that line, you have to use premium gas. In the owners manual for the Mustang GT, the minimum octane is 93. With the huge(something like $.20 or more) difference in the 2 octanes, and the inflating gas prices (right now, just regular is around $1.289 per gal), unless you have a lot of money to waste, 87 octane is just fine.
One thing people might say is "well yeah it costs more, but you get better mileage per gallon so it evens out in the end". (LOL!!) It's nice in theory, and I actually thought that once too, so I sat down and did a few sample drives (what can I say, I have too much free time). I filled up my car with regular, did a round-trip to a known destination and back home, so that the car would use nearly all the gas in the tank, and then filled up the tank. I then figured out how much i spent per mile (cost of gas per gallon times number of gallons used, then I divided that total by number of miles traveled), then I repeated the whole process with premium gas. With my car, and probably for most newer cars made to run on regular gas, the mileage difference is minor. However the cost difference is not so minor. In the end, it still cost more, per mile traveled, to use premium gas. So unless you have to use it, don't.
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