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2005 Gas Prices
Welcome to San Francisco Bay Area gas prices. Ugh. First off, I can pump my OWN gas to save about 30¬¢ a gallon. Second, if you’re stupid enough to pay for premium gas… well, you deserve to pay THAT much more a gallon. Unless you drive a ferrari, you don’t need it.
But premium lovers are passionate. “I would simply curtail driving rather than switch grades,” says Bill Teater of Mount Vernon, Ohio, who puts high-test in both his Cadillacs, though only one recommends it. He’s sure both the DeVille and the Escalade run rough and lack pep on regular.
Prejudice and preference aside, engineers, scientists and the federal government say there’s little need for premium.
The main advantage of premium-grade gas is that it allows automakers to advertise a few more horsepower by designing and tuning engines to take advantage of premium’s anti-knock properties. But auto engineers generally agree that if you use regular in a premium engine, the power loss is so slight, most drivers can’t tell. It’s all psychological.
“I personally use regular even though my owner’s manual says you’ll get better performance with premium,” says Lewis Gibbs, consulting engineer and 45-year veteran at Chevron oil company. He’s chairman of Technical Committee 7 on Fuels, part of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Fuels & Lubricants Council. Gibbs knows gas.
The Federal Trade Commission, in a consumer notice, emphasizes: “(I)n most cases, using a higher-octane gasoline than your owner’s manual recommends offers absolutely no benefit. It won’t make your car perform better, go faster, get better mileage or run cleaner.”
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2 Responses to '2005 Gas Prices'
Around here, the “premium” fuels have been cheaper than regular lately. Also, a lot of gas stations have been posting the cheaper Super Unleaded price at the top of their signs, and since I only pay attention to the numbers, I think that’s Regular because I’m used to Regular being on top. But then it’s NOT! And I have to pay five cents a gallon MORE for Regular!
It…. it don’t make no sense!
Well, that’s just CRAZY!!!
They probably do that intentionally to mess with you… then you’ll get up to the pump and auomatically press that same button and end up paying more. Ugh. One gas station I went to listed prices 30¬¨¬¢ cheaper on their signs than they actually charged at the pump. A TINY sign on the pump said that you’d save that 30¬¨¬¢ by using their special gas card or something.
Doesn’t make sense AT ALL!!! They just want our hard earned dollars. Or for some people… their parents hard earned dollars.