All - I know this has been discussed before but I've just filled up on V Power for only the second time ever and am impressed.
I was running seriously low on gas the other night but typically thought stuff it I'll gas up in the morning....What happens - left my wallet at home.
I feathered the throttle to work and back but thought I'd just make it. Got about 0.5 mile from home and felt a slight hesistation as the fumes started to run out! Just coasted home so I quickly ran up to the garage in the wifes car with a Petrol can - topped up Coupe then took her to the garage. Felt sooo guilty I filled then with V Power.
Now I did fill once with this stuff when I first bought the car but could not really feel any difference then - not sure if its the Placebo effect but this time the car feels like its pulling harder especially from lower down?
Can i justify further tank fulls at £1.20 a litre?!

V Power feels like it makes my car drive smoother and pull harder but again that may be the Placebo effect as said?

I've tried using V-power a few times and to be honest can't really tell the difference. I'm sure others will disagree though.

Are you running any sort of aftermarket map though Boosted?

Mines standard at the mo engine-wise......

I like it. Makes my car feel smoother anyway whatever anyone else says I know my baby

No mate, all standard.

I've never put anything else in my Plus so can't say what the difference on normal unleaded would be, but in my ex's VIS it made for MUCH smoother running to the extent that even my ex admitted she noticed the difference when she had to use normal unleaded on occasions...

I've been running nothing but V Power for some time now. The first time I filled up with it I thought the performance improved although I can't rule out the placebo effect.

I happened to stop at a BP garage last week & filled up with Ultimate & it felt like the performance improved again! I'm sure this is all in my head though, as Ultimate is 97 RON compared with V Power's 99! I reckon I'm just too suggestible!!

My old coop ran on Morrisons or any petrol without any problems at all, my LE just won't run well on anything other than BP Ultimate - haven't tried the VPower though as I don't have a local enough Shell station. The "good stuff" from Tesco was the worst though, felt as if I'd filled up with diesel!!

In my 3 1/2 years of driving, every car I've ever had has always ran solely on V-Power. With the exception of using 2 tanks of Total Premium in the Coupe when I was in the Lakes last month... Can't say I noticed a loss in performance from using the Total stuff, but I filled her back up with V-Power as soon as we got back to Altrincham and again, it could be the placebo effect, but she feels more responsive now.

I think I get a little more smoothness in the top end of the rev range with V-Power!

ive dont the full tank of normal unleaded then full tank of V power test and i think it makes a difference.

Like didcoop said its smoother and pulls harder with v power thats with my 20vt and the birds VIS.

Realistically, youre not going to see much of a difference, if power is what you want. What you will see if you could open up the engine, is a much cleaner one running on v power. Ive spoken to several mechanics & its the same story, a very clean engine when stripped down....

so in essence it's a con perpetrated by mechanics so they dont get dirty when our cars blow up..

Well I wouldn't know about that, but v power is deemed a worth while route to take by many petrol-heads. Especially if you have a modded engine..

A full test including rolling road is here, it shows Tesco 99RON as giving more power?


Test is here: http://www.thorneymotorsport.co.uk/tuning/Fuel_Test_Results_Update.shtml


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_V-Power
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070718082425AAiRdI8

In simple terms, Shells V Power is near identical to the Optimax product that it replaced, in power and ‘feel’ terms it continued to out perform all 95 octane fuels and we’d still recommend owners of all performance cars use the highest quality fuel they can find. However the performance offered by the fuel was sometimes inconsistent.

The Tesco 99 fuel again outperformed V Power in all the tests but the differences between the two fuels were marginal and we doubt most people would tell the difference in their cars on a day to day basis. However the Tesco fuel was the most consistent.

The BP 102 fuel showed the best gains in terms of ‘feel’ and performed better on the dyno and on initial fill up, when the fuel was fresh the power gains were noticeable even above the Tesco 99 fuel. However the gains seemed to dramatically diminish over time or with increases in engine bay temperature a feature which we are continuing to test.

The testing we have conducted deliberately concentrated purely on the performance gains offered by the premium fuels without reference to cost, cost is a financial measure not a performance one. However it would be puerile to simply ignore its reference in testing deigned for the general fuel buying public. In pure cost/performance terms its very hard to beat the Tesco product, on average the Tesco 99 fuel was 5-6% cheaper than the V Power (up to 10% cheaper when compared to some motorway fuel stations). The BP fuel at almost £2.50 a litre was obviously the most expensive and even with our £50,000 per year fuel bill it would be impossible to justify using the fuel with any degree of regularity - £147 to fill the tank of the CSL was even worthy of a picture of the pump price guage.

Bottom line? Use the Tesco 99 fuel where you can find it, it offers the best, most consistent performance of the fuels available and it’s cheaper than V Power. If you can’t find a Tescos that sells it then go for Shell’s V Power. If you’re feeling really flush, have a point to prove on a rolling road day (days where car enthusiasts compare their cars power on a dyno) or want to extract the maximum potential out of the car on a track day then the BP 102 fuel is worth a go, just bear in mind that £150 a tank would pay for a good proportion of tyres or some decent driver training.

Thorney Motorsport is continuing the fuel testing (we’ve made a rod for our own backs now it seems) so next up on the agenda is a performance test of all the race fuels currently available to see how they compare to the BP 012 fuel which we will undertake on our fleet of Vauxhall VX220 race cars and on our new Corsa VXR road car. We hope to have this next instalment (starting to feel like a soap opera now) at the end of the year. In the meantime we will continue to test the pump fuels and will continue to publish all of our findings.
John Thorne


Cut and pasted conclusion from http://www.thorneymotorsport.co.uk/tuning/Fuel_Test_Results_Update.shtml in case it should be removed from original site

With my old trusty novitec chip setup the boost changed with V-Power, 1.5bar against 1.35bar with the usual 98octane.

Its proven on performance cars, there was a good test on 5th gear once where they tried 3 differnt types of fuels on 3 different cars and tested all the fuels on all the cars, and there was a difference on the more powerful/performance cars.
More bhp and more torque.

Its all ive ever used, so cant compare to 95ron.

Straight down to Tesco tomorrow lol!

my coupe didnt run so well on tesco's super i havent used it since and that was about a year ago.

i dont think it is because of the gtec 1 chip either

Suppose I should take comfort that the last Fuel-up in my Esprit was good-old 4-star - still available in selected outlets.......Only about £1.80 a litre!

I have Tesco 99 in at the moment (because the local Shell station had run out of V-Power - weird, they've been out of it for three days, and this morning, they were completely closed)

Anyway - I can't feel any difference between Tesco 99 and Shell V-Power, although I have to say that the car has started more easily from stone cold for the past couple of days - something I'll keep an eye on.


Price was identical at 118.9p/litre

Strangely I noticed on tesco 99 my hot starts were a little more difficult, not much though and the car does seem smoother. But I also found morrisons standard fuel to feel as good.

I think the key part of that test were:

Tesco 99 RON consistently gave good level of performance and was slightly higher than V-Power. (On a NA BMW engine). That doesn't mean you can expect the same on a Fiat Forced Induction engine though.

V-Power tended to vary in the standard of performance, possibly as the petrol degraded over time. I am guessing that possibly Tesco were selling more petrol and hence maybe the supplies were fresher?

There are rumours, (And I stress rumours) that unscrupulous garages (remember most are Franchises or were until recently, and I have a good friend who owned 2 Shell franchises), that some garages may sell normal 95 RON as V-Power. Though I struggle to see how that can be achieved.

Personally I only use Super in my cars, I found that Total Super gave me the feeling that our other cars seemed to run smoother and, crisper.

I find that our Coupe prefers BP ultimate.

I did read that to get the full benefit of detergent and other parts of the additive package, you should change fuel providers/brands at regular intervals.

i strongly doubt shell would allow that. i have a mate who works for texaco at the tamworth refinery and he claims anyone found doing that (via their drivers etc) would have the franchise pulled

As I said, unconfirmed rumour, but the franchise makes next to no money on fuel, the profit comes from the shop. So the temptation is always going to be there.

The tanker drivers no longer work for Shell they were made redundant in 98-99 and offered jobs with haulage/contract companies. I have a relation who is one of them. Altered pay & conditions under TUPE law, maybe one or two of them look the other way in return for a few quid, or as they simply just discharge fuel into various tanks they don't know anyway?

As in any walk of life, there are people who can circumvent any system, might be as easy as changing the pump displays! I don't know, all I do know is that there are rumours that it can happen.

If not then, there is a wide variation in the quality of V-Power according to the test above. Which begs the question why would Tesco 99 RON perform better consistently?

that much is true charlie, but i for one would be gutted/furious if i discovered they were stiffing me...

£1.21 a litre near me when i filled up wednesday, over £70 went in!!!

Looks like a good enough reason to me. The Tesco petrol stations in my area are always a LOT busier than the Shell ones, but I can't say if they're all using 99 or normal.

I've filled up with Optimax/ V-Power and Tesco 99 for 5 years now. Never used anything else even before it was mapped to use the 'good stuff' (except a few occasions where I had to limp to the next petrol station).