A while ago I mentioned I'd switched from fuelling El Pimpo with regular gas to super, at an increased cost of about $4 per tank.

Just finished my second tank of 'super' and my car now does an incredible 19.5mpg as opposed to the previous 16.5mpg. (I've been in America too long already if I'm boasting about getting 19.5mpg.)

So it'll go 250 miles on a tank as opposed to 220. And in the end, that means I'm getting almost two gallons free and saving about $5.

So $5 - $4 = $1.

By switching to super I'm saving a dollar - but the car is a lot more powerful, runs smoother and generally just is BETTER and HAPPIER.

My mechanic says it has to do with the way your car is tuned whether it will performance at maximum with regular or premium. Mine is set for 89 octane.

Also my baby smiles and performs beautifully after a wash, blow dry and waxing

You can't call that "El Pimpo" until you get some rims!

Do a Google Image search on "Donk" for inspiration...

Mine works better with 87. No performance boost and less mileage the higher I go. Last tank of 87 gave me fractionally under 35mpg for the 11.5 gallons I used. That gives me potentially 500 miles per tank if I ran it right down and the last 3 gallons gets used at the same rate. Nice.

Wow, what do you drive?

I seem to get the feeling that big old clunky American motors are the only ones who really reap the benefits of my theory. And they generally don't get 35mpg!!!

you're really an engineer, aren't you?!?

(writer my arse - starting a sentence with And?!) Porky Pier!

Mazda3 4 door. Manual.

Nice! And you always get better mileage on a manual, I guess.

what's the maintenance on that like? services and the like?

is that car tuned for higher octane , hence it running better on a tank of it ?

if its an old high compression engine , high octane will get it running to peak porformance , but the timing should be able to be adjusted to get it running the same on lower octane .

i had the same thing on my rover p5b , lots very little performance but saved on fuel bills . the performance thing was to do with wieght of car , would have been un-noticeable on a lighter car .

The 5 door will probably be my next car - I assume with that mileage yours is the 2L version rather than the 2.3?

No, it's the 2.3. Same as the 5 door. I was surprised but even though there are some annoying issues with the car, it really is a cracker for the money. Even if it was $25k it would still be good value in my opinion.

May well be mine too. Had one as a hire car for about a week and it was great.

I have a '99 mazda protege which is basically an old UK mazda 3.
Just had to shell out $1k for a new timing belt and water pump (97k miles on the clock) and now she's not running so smooth as some exhaust gas recycling valve has gone too.
Up until that point the only thing I'd had to do in 18 months was get new break pads, and take care of oil changes.
Will be driving it into the ground, which is hopefully later rather than sooner.
My dad has a mazda 6 at home and has over 100k on the clock. No major problems as yet.