I used to own a Peugeot106 Rallye a few years back, that had a rally tuned 1300 engine that would hit 100bhp @ 7500rpm. Now on the filler cap it stated '98 RON ONLY' which was 'super unleaded' which in turn was rather more than your ordinary 95 RON unleaded.
I wanted to know why exactly it should only be ran on Super and it took me a while to find out (from the AA in the end, not Peugeot) that this 106 had 'soft valve seats' along with at the time a few other 'high performance' cars. I was told by the AA that only cars that have these soft valve seats would notice any difference between using Super & Ordinary unleaded.
I decided to try this out and after running on ordinary for a few weeks, the car actually started to sound rougher and gained a flat spot in the rev's. Switching back to Super made a immediate difference to the power and overall performance.
I now have a VW Golf 20V GTI and decided to run it on Shells Optimax for a few weeks. I can't say if aI 'really' could tell the difference or if the engine really did sound a bit quieter/smoother or if I was imagining it
So I decided that it wasn't worth paying the extra for the Optimax.
Now I believe, I may be wrong, that Shell are at the moment under investigation by trading standards over the claim that Optimax 'gives an extra burst of power when you need it' in their advertising....because only CERTAIN vehicles filled up with the stuff would get the so called 'burst of power'.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: Better fuel economy, increased performance, longer life engine and protection. Disadvantages: The PRICE! the fact that there aren't shell garages everywhere....
Taison 09.09.2005 (10.09.2005)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
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Apr 5th, 2004
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