Are there any advantages to using this slightly higher priced liquid-tax? As always, information is scarce or contradictory in many places.

Is it good or bad for a Coupe engine?
Does it make any real MPG difference?
MPG equivalent to the extra cost?
Emissions difference (Useful for MOT's)?
Performance difference?

Would be nice to have some solid information on such a seemingly trivial matter.

without going into the ins and outs of it, short answer - no.

Its reputed to burn hotter/cleaner etc but essentially its a waste of time and effort putting it in, unless your car is tuned to run on it

Ran BPUltimate for a month, have tried Tesco99 and VPower. Conclusions:

Makes engine run sweeter, idle improved and a perceptible improvement to power delivery.
No tangible improvement to MPG
No differance to emissions on a cat-equipped vehicle - it's petrol FFS, has CO, CO2 and all that other crap in there...
No differance to engine health unless running all the time, Vpower is said to keep an engine cleaner if you run it all the while. I say screw that and change the oil more often.

If you can afford it then run on it, but don't expect miracles.

Super is supposed to have more cleaner in it for fuel injectors.

tried it b4 but ill stick with the cheaper stuff, not worth the xtra £££

always use morrisons, same petrol that shell use on there forecourts

Looks like the premium for me would be about £3.30 for a full tank of the stuff.

The reason I ask is due to the Crimbo madness, a local garage had run out of regular, so I was forced to chuck in some super (Light had been on for about 16 miles already... wanted to ensure getting home ) and the response from the car just seemed more instant, pure placebo effect I'm sure, however I just wanted to know if there was actually any benefit to regularly running with it as I'd never even considered it before now

in a nut shell...............no............imo

From whenever i have used it, i have found that they work out about the same price overall.

Normal petrol = 270-290 miles per tank and oil gets dirty really quickly
super = 290-310 miles per tank and oil stays clean for longer
Shell V Power = 320-345 miles per tank, a tad more response and oil seemed to stay cleaner.


where possible i run as high grade as possible, this will be even more so after a remap when i tidy my overfuelling up

only use the premium stuff but when i had my fiesta i switched between the two. engine used to run sweeter on the more expensive stuff but performance gain was not v noticable. struck it down to the car having a "good day" rather den the fuel.

If I had a diesel I'd use V-Power Diesel as loads of people have said it improves their mpg by a fair amount.

I've never, over the space of 5 cars, noticed a huge difference by using V-Power unleaded. But I guess I've not owned a "proper" sports/performance car. It is supposed to make a difference in all engines but it's definitely not noticeable in most.... except my old Escort. The engine was held together with rust, and the V-Power has cleaning agents, so it pretty much just disolved and cleaned away the engine.

The Shell V-Power is the one that seems to constantly show smoother running and as said above, does last longer and the oil stays cleaner for longer. I think to get the most out of it though you would need to remap the ECU as their designed to run on as low as 95 or maybe 94 octane iirc due to the different supplies in different countries.

I made a thread about this a while back, asking pretty much the same... In tried a Premium fuel for a few fill-ups and thought i found a difference in the coupe. Now, I always try and use premium fuel... mostly filling up with Shell (V power or Optimax whatever its called).

I find the throttle response is better with a premium fuel and it takes less to get the car going. I've also noticed slightly improved fuel consumption when using it... whether this is because of the fuel directly, or because im not having to push the car as much to get it going i dont know... but i do get about 30 miles more from a tank of premium.

I disagree with anyone who thinks its a 'placebo effect' as ive filled up with standard and premium fuel in a few different cars... with different results. Corsa 1.2 for example, there was no noticeable difference at all. In my old Saxo VTR i saw a slight difference in throttle response, but no real difference in fuel consumption. In the Coupe though, there are noticeable differences.

From what i've found, it does seem like the bigger (or more powerful) the engine, the more noticeable the difference is. Because of the difference in fuel consuption, i'll continue to use premium fuels as that itself covers the price difference.

I think I'll try a few tank's of premium, if my extra £3.30 is covered by more efficient consumption, then I'll definitely stick with it.



p.s. sorry for making a new thread, I did try a search first, but the function seems to be a little broke at the moment.

Saw an old 5th Gear episode on Dave a few weeks back, and they put differnt petrols in the same car (seperately not mixed) and dyno'd it each time, and they did see gains on 4-5 bhp, and recommended it, but that was when the price difference was 2p a litre, of £1 extra to fill up the tank. Now its 8p a litra more expensive at my local garage, not so worth it.

whilst the grades may be diffeent octanes, all the brands come from the same place, was doing releif valves for the Coryton refinary as part of their shutdown last year, and every tanker, wheather it Shell/BP or Supermarket was filling up from the same tank, the normal 95octane unleaded is the same anywhere.
The supers are the only thing different, even then though Esso and BP are both the same (97)
A few years ago it was a BP refinary, and Shell had one near it (Shell Haven), but thats now derelict, as they all use the Coryton one (in that area, I know there more than 1 refinary in the country)

Higher octane fuels burn slower to give off a more longer, hence more powerful combustion but since the standard Coupes were designed to run on 95 Ron and have standard performance components, there will be no real difference in power and only slight difference in response, economy and engine smoothness.

Kind of like hooking up loads of batteries and power caps to a standard sound system - it already has the required power, and only when the speakers are upgraded and running high power amps will extra battery power be required, and make the system run better :-)

I've run both fuels in the Coupe & Honda Blackbird & kept MPG records on both over a lengthy period of time (Blackbird 3000 miles over 6 months & Coupe 6000+ miles over the same period using only super unleaded or equivalent.

This compares with a rolling record of 12 fill ups, approx 3600 miles for the Coupe and 1700 for the Blackbird on standard unleaded which shows an average 33mpg and 37mpg respectively.

I've found no difference in mpg or performance on either vehicle. I've found the best way to increase both mpg and performance in the Coupe is to switch off the air con. The recent cold weather has also increased mpg although I've not noticed any increase in performance.