Luxury is the antithesis of austerity. If you want the finest, fastest or most feature laden you’re going to have to fork over cash and usually lots of it.
This is especially true in the automotive world where high-end vehicles often cost an arm, a leg and a sizable chunk of your torso. But it’s not just the purchase price of a premium car or truck that will savage your budget, maintenance and fuel costs can add up faster than the national debt.
In fact, nearly every luxury automobile on the market today recommends premium-grade gasoline, but not all. Mercifully some will run just fine on the dregs of a filling station’s fuel cistern.
Broadly speaking there are three categories of octane requirement. In some vehicles it’s a-OK to run good ol’ regular-grade petrol. However, in others manufacturers recommend premium for optimum performance. And finally in the third group high-octane gasoline is required for proper operation.
As always it’s best to follow the manufacturer’s advice. Remember, octane is a measure of gasoline’s resistance to igniting while squeezed. Engines with higher compression ratios are specifically designed to run on fuel with greater octane. Using less than the spec can cause internal damage, though modern, computer-controlled powerplants are quite adaptable to varying fuel quality.
Accordingly, here’s a list of luxury vehicles that will happily run on regular-grade gasoline. On the following page is a list of other models that are recommended premium and others that require it ...
