the richest man in atherstone

A couple of months ago, I was stood at the petrol pump unscrewing my fuel cap, when a sign advertising super-unleaded caught my eye. It boasted that I would have a cleaner engine, would notice an increase in performance and could get more miles per gallon by using it. Being the tightwad I am, it was the 'more miles' that I homed in on. If I can get more miles per gallon with this stuff, it would result in more money in my wallet.

The price of the super-unleaded was a penny a litre more expensive than the regular unleaded but I decided there and then to try it out. I'm not usually one for impulse buys but that day the marketeers got me

What is super-unleaded?
Regular unleaded is 95-RON, super unleaded is 97-RON. The higher the RON number, the more powerful the explosion in a car's engine when petrol is ignited, therefore less fuel is needed (apparently).

So, over the next couple of months, I filled up my tank with three lots of super-unleaded and three lots of regular unleaded and compared my mileage using the two. The journeys that I made were relatively similar to make the experiment fair. I measured the mileage I got between filling up and the moment my fuel light flashed on.

On average, with the premium-unleaded I traveled 306 miles.

On average, with the regular unleaded I traveled - wait for it - 306 miles.

So, no difference whatsoever.

Then I did what I should have done before I even started this experiment. I did some Internet research into the differences between the two types of fuel. The upshot was that super-unleaded is only more economical (and gives better performance) with high performance cars. Mine is not a high performance car. And, I must say, I never noticed any difference whatsoever with the performance.

In conclusion, I'm a little wiser about the virtues of the different unleaded pumps at the petrol station but the most valuable lesson that this experiment taught me is not to put one of my schemes into action before doing the relevant research first. Oh, and don't buy on impulse.