My understanding (and I'm not mechanically minded) is that it only makes a difference on cars with a high compression ratio. My Alpina is supposed to run on 98 RON petrol according to the manufacturer and members of the Alpina forum have tested their own cars with varying grades and types of petrol and the majority swear by Shell Optimax.
Unfortunately there isn't a Shell garage local to me and a 30 mile round trip to fill up the tank would waste over a gallon of the precious juice
I think this entire topic was done to death here....
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2144631
SUper unleaded IS useful for turbo engined cars,and in particular,those running high levels of boost,where the higher octane rating reduces the onset of detonation,but the BHP gains to be had with normally aspirated engines are quite small,and amount to between 5-7% at best,which most drivers simply won't notice in normal use.
I wouldn't call my engine high performance at all and as such apart from it feeling a little smoother i don't notice a massive performance improvement, but i do get serious fuel economy benefits!
The main problem in this instance as i tried to explain before is people top up a half empty tank or just shove one run through it with V Power etc and expect the world to be set on fire, try a few tanks and then switch back, the difference is usually far more apparent when you lose it as the gains are usually subtle.
I don't think you need to have a high performance engine to get benefits from higher octane fuel, but I'd say a Civic Type R would probably fall into that category.
FWIW - I drive an Impreza Turbo, and I swear by Shell's Optimax / V-Power, only thing is the nearest station to me is a 50 mile round trip, but I get so much more mileage out of it than any other petrol that it's still worth that 50 mile trip!
BP Ultimate is absolutely horrendous, on average I get around 100 miles less from a tank than I do with Shell (200 compared to 300), so I won't touch the stuff these days - the regular unleaded is better.
Im not Accuising you of lying but a 50 mile round trip in my impreza would have cost me £8, so it definately wouldnt be worth while!
I've owned two EP3 CTR's in the past and used standard unleaded in both. I tried Optimax a few times but didn't notice any benefit. After the CTR's i had an S2000 and i used Tesco 99 ron in that.
Geoff.data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
A rough calc (in my experience) - 50 miles on V-Power costs £8.33 and 50 miles on BP Ultimate costs £12.50
Honestly mate - despite sacrificing 50 miles worth of fuel to actually go and get it, it lasts longer - I've only done it the once though, I simply can't be arsed, but I'll always go an fill up with Shell if I'm anywhere near one. There's an Esso near where I work and use that these days an get about 270-80 a tank.
Shell V-Power gives me on average 300miles out of tank - the most I've ever managed on a motoroway trip is 331 before the warning lamp came on. I've never had anything over 220 from a tank of BP ultimate. Bit of a bummer when there's a BP garage in our village (Lake District) and the nearest Shell stations are Carlisle or Penrith.
Shell had 2 garages locally this time last year - one swapped to another fuel and the other was bought by Aldi to be a new car park data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I too go out of my way to fill up with Shell V Power, but it is only about 15 miles in my case....
The new 2018 civic type R runs on super 98 Ron as well as 95. Whilst the beast tops out at 169mph on 95. I had the type R up to 173mph on the same stretch of test road under same conditions. But lost almost 3mpg on a measured 50 mile of road using 98 Ron hope that helps
https://www.avforums.com/attachments/upload_2018-9-4_20-39-17-jpeg.1057291/
kowalski hasn't posted for 10 years...