This has been discussed adnauseum somewhere else.
Our MINIs were designed with high compression engines and designed to use higher octane fuel. At 1.6cc, it's amazing how much power they wring out of it.
A Civic DX was designed to use regular gas. Higher octane gas would do it no good. But neither would it do bad other than waste a lot of money. Of course, if the guy chipped his Civic to take advantage of the higher octane, that might be a different story. I also have another car that uses regular gas and putting even mid-grade in it causes cold start problems. So use the fuel your car was designed for.
Having said that, and the fact that this thread came up, implies that someone might be asking if using regular 87octane gas would be fine for our MINIs. The computers in our MINIs would adjust to allow them to run fine. However, you will probably notice a decrease in performance and gas mileage as the car is not running at its optimal level of tune. As Stryder has already said, the article was written more for those with cars that are designed to use regular gas. |