Premium or Regular: Is one really better than the other?

Premium gas must be called premium for a reason, and therefore must be better than regular, or why else call it 'premium' right?

 Premium.  According to Dictionary.com, means many things!
1. A prize, bonus, or award.
2. An amount to be paid, as an insurance premium.
3. A sum above the nominal or par value of a thing
4. of exceptional quality or greater value than others of its kind; superior
and finally:
5. of higher price or cost.


Compared to premium gasoline, lower-octane fuels like 'regular' don't allow the engine to run as much ignition advance during situations calling for rapid acceleration. More ignition advance allows the engine to make more power, and accelerate more quickly. Since the engine doesn't make quite as much power with lower-octane fuels, this translates into slightly slower acceleration in cars for which premium fuel is recommended. The performance loss is a bit more noticeable in turbocharged engines.  The performance loss, however, is something you will only notice if you are keeping track of your 0-60 times!  This power difference is extremely low, usually in the 1% to 3% range, and will not generally be noticed.  Would you notice that your 300 Horsepower car all of a sudden only had 297?  No, you wouldn't.

If you had a drag car that was making 2,500 Horsepower and you used a lower octane fuel, would you notice that it now only made 2,425 HP?  Yes, then you would probably see a difference in your 1/4 mile times.  You are not driving around every day with 2,500 HP are you?  If you are, let me know and we'll go for a cruise!

There is little difference in the energy content of regular versus premium gasoline, as they both contain about 111,400 British Thermal Units of energy per gallon, which means that they will both burn and explode roughly the same.

Lets take a quick chemistry lesson in order to better understand our fuel.

Oil is a hydrocarbon fuel, meaning that the individual molecules contain hydrogen and carbon atoms all tied together in a chain.  Gasoline is made from oil, and modern fuels are blended together in various ways with many different hydrocarbons; 200 or so.  One of these is called octane, or isooctane to be precise, and it consists of 8 carbon atoms (Thus the 'oct' part), and 18 hydrogen atoms, which together make C8H18! -  Wow, that was fun, wasn't it?

The reason octane is used extensively is because it has a natural tendency to resist spontaneous explosion when exposed to heat and pressure, much like what is found inside your engine!  When the fuel inside your engine explodes due to heat and pressure instead of when the spark plug ignites it is commonly called 'knock' or 'Pinging'.



'Knock' is very bad, and causes harsh vibrations and a loud noise, the 'knock', which over time will seriously damage your engine.  I'll go over the intricacies of the four-stroke engine in a future post.

This is why the wizards at car manufacturers came up with a 'knock' sensor many many years ago to  detect the pre-ignition, or 'knock', and adjust the timing or boost accordingly to prevent damage.  This was initially developed due to the huge variation found in fuels many years ago.  The first incarnation of this type of detection system originated in the SAAB 'H' engine, launched in 1981 for their SAAB 900 and was called Automatic Performance Control. - and you thought all the cool stuff was just recently made!  

Enough history, so lets get back to the fuel.  Lets see what the numbers mean at the pump!  87 Octane, 90 Octane, even 93 Octane... that must be the best one, right?  Hold on a minute!  This number at the pump is not a measure of the percentage of octane actually found in your gas!  Rather, it is a measure of how that gas compares with a pure mixture of octane and heptane.  n-heptane (C7H16) is highly susceptible to the self ignition we spoke of earlier, and has the opposite properties to octane.  At special laboratories all over the world, chemists create these 'reference fuels' and then use them in comparison with refined gasoline following the dictates of standardized measures, in order to assess the viability of gasoline blends.

"The American Society of Testing and Materials has a thick document on how you determine octane rating with this specialized one-cylinder engine," says Joseph Shepard, a mechanical engineer at the California Institute of Technology.  "The higher the number the harder it is to have knock." 
(www.scientificamerican.com)


The key for drivers is to know whether premium gasoline is merely recommended or if it's required by their respective manufacturers. The recommended ones are only so that the manufacturers can advertise slightly higher Horsepower numbers.  The required ones were designed specifically for that fuel and are more than likely using much higher compression ratios in their engines.

Edmunds.com has compiled two lists: "premium recommended" and "premium required" for vehicles from the 2008-'13 model years (with a few 2014 model-year vehicles). If your vehicle is on the "premium recommended" list, you're OK to try switching to regular unleaded gasoline. If, on the other hand, your car is on the "premium required" list, then you have to run premium fuel. You can confirm the information on these lists by checking your owner's manual.

Recommended: Recommended

Required:  Required

Ultimately the choice is up to you which fuel you want to use in your car.  Lets assume for easy math a $0.10 per liter difference between regular and premium fuel.  With an average fill up being around 65 liters - ish, you would be spending an extra $6.50 / tank.  Lets also say you only fill up twice a month, twelve months a year.  Looks like you just spent an extra $156 on fuel.  You might own your car for an average of say, 5 years?  There's an extra $780 in gas!

I just checked, and it looks like for my $780, I can go to Fiji!  Its warm in Fiji, and I'm not the one filling up the taxi.  Vanuinui vinaka ki na siga ni kua!

Matt Bourbeau
Transportation Specialist
McFadden Honda
matt@mcfaddenhonda.ca

What is the fair retail price for this vehicle?

Blue Book, Black Book, Yellow Book, what's with all these books????

With everybody having access to online resources in today's techno-rich world, there are numerous places for the average car shopper to educate themselves about the vehicle they are thinking of purchasing!

These resources can be fantastic tools to educate yourself and find a great car at a reasonable price! Some of the most common are Black Book /Kelley Blue Book and the  N.A.D.A Guide.  The information they provide can be vast and somewhat overwhelming.  For them to truly be useful they have to provide the answer to the question you are asking, which is normally “what is the fair retail price for this vehicle?”  Unfortunately, what these sites do is provide an average WHOLESALE price given some very specific scenarios.  Vehicle prices are regionally affected and if you have the only 2006 Acura RSX Type-S within 1,000 Km’s the supply is very low and the demand may be the opposite.

Here's the "but".....   You need to be able to use these tools accurately in order to benefit from them.  All of these guides have disclaimers along the lines of:

"Disclaimer
The trade-in value is presented as a guideline and each vehicle may require professional evaluation to arrive at a specific trade-in value. A trade-in value is lower than the retail asking price because it doesn't reflect a vehicle's reconditioning, repairs, cost of funds, and/or commissions required to sell the vehicle. We strongly suggest you use these prices as a guide only. This evaluation is a baseline range of value we would expect a dealer to give a consumer trading in a vehicle on the purchase of another vehicle, based on the dealer not seeing the car and allowing for worse case scenarios."

(http://www.canadianblackbook.com)


Many factors go into the pricing of a vehicle you find at a dealership, as in reconditioning costs so that that vehicle passes a safety inspection and will be reliable and safe for the next owners.  Advertizing costs, fuel, cleaning, incidentals that tend to occur over time, as well as a bit of "mark-up" are all items to be considered.

The "mark-up" of a vehicle has to be carefully calculated in order to provide for fair pricing depending on the market availability for a particular car, leaving some room for negotiations, and last but not least, the ability to allow the dealership to make a profit.

Dealerships are still a business, and are required to make money......there.....I said it.....it's out in the open! 

All the hard working people that have had their hand in making that perfect vehicle ready for you to test drive, from the sales-consultant that took it in on trade, to the mechanic that reconditioned it and made sure it was safe, to the detailer that got all muddy cleaning off the under-carriage; everybody has to make a living.

Using tools like Black Book ( which has been here for over 52 years now) are great, just remember that they get their wholesale pricing primarily from auctions, and those numbers may not reflect current conditions in your market.

Nada Guide: Blue-and-Orange/Yellow Book
"Spokespeople for the 74-year-old NADA guide (U.S. Only) say their book is superior to the others because the NADA book is the official data guide issued strictly for dealer members of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) trade group, and it has access to totally exclusive data, such as dealer retail sales, and it analyzes additional data from more than 500,000 various points of sale and other market data.
They say the circulation of the NADA guide out-guns the competition by almost five to one. The wholesale and retail pricing listed in the NADA guide seems to be higher in some areas than Kelley Blue Book due to its present standard that all trade-ins be in very clean condition. Since "front line" might not accurately describe your vehicle, (only 5 percent of trade-ins or wholesale vehicles are) be prepared to adjust your expectations downward from what the NADA guide says." (http://autos.aol.com/article/best-blue-book)

"Kelley Blue Book (U.S. Only) has been around for about 81 years and rates cars in 4 main categories: Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor.  They boast that one out of three people in the U.S. use Kelley Blue Book to help them buy new or used cars.  Again, they base their numbers on information gleaned from car auctions across the country and sets their wholesale costs based on cars that are "front-line" ready." (http://autos.aol.com/article/best-blue-book)

As you can see, there is a veritable cornucopia of information out there regarding cars!   Understanding that they all get their information in differing ways, and keeping in mind the market specific to your region and you should be able to inform yourself a bit before starting your new car journey!

Contrary to popular belief, dealerships are made up of people just like you and no one is out to "get" you.

The best advice I can give as a Transportation Specialist is this:   Find a vehicle you want to learn about, do some research, ask your friends and family who have bought a car recently if there is a sales representative that they are willing to recommend and are comfortable with, and try one out for yourself!   All dealerships should be happy to provide you with everything they know about a car, including any reconditioning work completed, and a Car-proof / Car-fax history report.   If you are going to use the vehicle in the real world, ask for a real world test drive!   If you plan to use it off-road, take it off-road!   All of these do not cost YOU anything, so relax! This process should be fun, not scary!

Matt Bourbeau
Transportation Specialist
McFadden Honda
matt@mcfaddenhonda.ca