It's a widespread but misguided belief that if you use a high octane fuel your car's performance will automatically increase. "You won't achieve any improved performance from using higher octane fuels unless your vehicle's engine is designed for them."Generally, large cars (holdens, fords, Toyotas), and most jap cars like ULP. Turbocharged cars and european cars tend to like PULP, and crazy sports cars like UPULP, but you don't gain anything from putting UPULP into a Commodore. I hope this stops someone out there from wasting their money.
The ABC awards (also in the Open Road magazine) were an interesting read. The Focus won the cheap medium car award (Honda Accord for expensive medium car). It's good to see the Focus being not shit. Nathan should be happy. However, they spend about half the text talking about how well the Mazda 3 is selling, and how it's high demand and therefore high price made it lose to the focus.
Also good to see the Mitsubishi's 380 finally hit paydirt with the Best large car. They really were putting all their eggs in one basket, and a 3.8L 6cyl FWD does sound a little ridiculous. Trevardy says it feels cramped, but the review says it's not. Anyway, good on em. Hopefully they'll live long enough to make an Evo X, and hopefully an Evo Unlimited which is a MMOG which we can all enjoy, shortly followed by Evo: Advent Children which is basically just a crap movie trying to cash in on the glory days of the Evo VII.
Also good to see the Koreans do well. Hyundai Getz won the small car award and shows that when making cars on the cheap, Hyundai knows how to do it best. Even the Sonata was mentioned in the Large Car category. It's odd to see how in the field of cars and electronics the Koreans aren't as good as the Japanese, because Korea's always struck me as being superior to Japan in every way possible.
WTF is with so many 4WD categories? 1 is enough. Stop encouraging people to buy that crap.
Also, if you've ever read the Open Road magazine, you would've seen Bayswater Car Rentals confounding ad with the "no birds" slogan. Looks like someone gave them a ring to find out WTF Mate:
For years Sydneysiders have engaged in furious alehouse debate about the meaning of the Bayswater Car Rentals "No birds" advertisements. We called the number on the ad and spoke to a rather curt supervisor named Michael.Zen...
Radar: I was just hoping you could solve an age-old mystery by telling me what "no birds" means.
Michael: It's an advertising slogan.
Radar: I'm aware of that, but what does it actually mean?
Michael: It means "no frills".
Radar: But how does "no birds" mean "no frills"?
Michael: It means "no gimmicks". Look it up in any dictionary.
Radar: Well, originally I thought it meant that you didn't need girls in your advertising.
Michael: That's exactly what it means.
Radar: OK. Then how come you've got a naked girl in your advert now?
Michael: [pause] Because sex sells.
Radar: So you're into frills after all?
Michael: For the purposes of advertisements in newspapers, yes.
It's British, and we're still a couple of years behind on their shows (but we are with our cars as well), but it's still awesome.
And re the Mitsubishi 380 - I don't think sales are going well, I mean, seriously, I've seen THREE on the road in as many months. I wish it weren't true, because I am a fan of Mitsubishi, but I agree with Trevardy, it's cramped.
I saw it at the Sydney Motor Show when it was officially released, and was quite disappointed. It's also very expensive. Good features, good quality car, and very safe. I'm not tall, but I my head was touching the roof when I sat in the back seat and leaned back slightly. The boot is not as big as it seems.
I can't comment on the ride, as only Trevardy has taken one for a spin - I believe he was somewhat impressed with it, but it just seems to lack... something.
Oh, and re PULP and UPULP, there is a considerable difference in my car when I use the UPULP. In performance and efficiency - but paying 20c more per litre for it? I think $1.45 per litre is a bit much !!
The M7, at least, isn't marred by incompetence. I'm not entirely against privatisation, but privatising distribution networks like roads, the electricity grid, phone lines, and water / gas, is IMHO a big mistake.
I think I've heard Harpy mention Top gear, but I still haven't gotten around to watching it yet. In a way I don't want to see it because I'm watching way too much TV way too efficiently.
I agree that the 380 isn't selling well. With petrol so expensive big cars are really bombing, and the 380 is really a balls competition with Holden and Ford. I was just happy that they were recognised for their achievement.
Your Astra is built for 95 RON (PULP) instead of 91 (ULP). In fact, the website seems to suggest either is OK, but 95 will give better performance. This makes sense, because a lot of small / medium cars are built like this. Putting 98 RON (UPULP) is probably a little silly, but I hear that UPULP is only marginally more expensive than PULP, and both are a lot more expensive than ULP.
In fact, when people ask me about how much more I spend considering I drive a Commodore, I don't factor in the fact that driving a smaller car would probably mean it was built for PULP.
Commodores/Falcons/Camrys/Magnas are generally okay because they were built here and/or were designed for Australian conditions, or have been slightly amended.
A lot (if not all) of the smaller cars are fully imported.
Having said that, the vast majority are fine to use Australian standard ULP (including mine), and only a small few require the use of PULP as standard. Some require UPULP.
When I put Premium in my car, I don't bother with the 95 RON stuff, just the UPULP stuff - as you're right about there not being much difference with price - but I definately found a significant difference in performance between PULP and UPULP (more than the difference between 91 RON ULP and 95 RON PULP).
If I use ULP it'd be something like $40 for 500 kms, but if I use UPULP it'd be about $45 for 550/560 kms.
I actually found the same comparable figures in my old Magna - not much better performance, but much better fuel economy.
I get my fuel injectors cleaned and filters replaced pretty regularly (I do a lot of driving) so I don't feel too guilty about using ULP (in fact, that's probably the only benefit for you using UPULP in your Commodore - it'll clean your injectors slightly/keep them clean if you use it all the time).
I disagree with you about factoring in more expensive petrol for smaller cars. 90% of people who drive small cars don't factor more expensive petrol in either. But that's probably because 87% of them only use ULP anyway, because that's all you need to use - especially the Jap ones. (Oh, and 68.7 % of statistics are also made up, so I've been told - yep, that's pretty lame/old, Tim).
Filling up with PULP every 4 or so fills is only recommended because it flushes out some of the shit in the injectors etc. And I think you'll find it'd be recommended for your Commodore too, for the same reason.
PS Top Gear is tops. Seriously.
Seriously, is there any way to edit comments?
Having said that, the only people who've ever commented are Julian and that other guy we linked to. Perhaps I should switch this off, but then I don't get how peon comments would work.
I didn't suggest there was a causal relationship between small cars and PULP requirements, but merely that one existed. In fact, I believe it would be quite likely for smaller cars to have greater petrol requirements merely because it's more difficult to get sufficient power output from a small engine if it's designed for crappier petrol.
I've actually tried the "fill up with premium to clean out the injectors" to see if the motor runs better (this was around the rattling car days, which is a story in itself). Having done this, and using premium, I've found no significant difference in either performance or economy, and I've actually been measuring this on my pda.
You lose me somewhere in the middle of your argument. You say you put 98RON in your Astra for performance, but then you compare the economy of ULP and UPULP (which, interestingly, shows ULP to be cheaper / about the same, even though you argue otherwise).
Then you say that the magna had the same characteristics: same performance but better fuel economy.
WTF?
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