E46 M3- V power vs regular unleaded

[Nedz]

After reading a thread in the BMW general section about a month or so ago about the rising costs of petrol and the difference between super/regular unleaded etc,i decided that after running my E46 M3 on regular unleaded for the last 3.5 years i would give V power a try.

My two previous cars were tuned mitsubishi evos which had to run strictly on Shell v power/optimax so when i finally grew up and bought an M3 i was quite relieved that i could now use (cheaper) regular unleaded.

My use of the car is strictly town driving,motorway journeys are very rare and £40 of regular unleaded was returning me about 120 miles max.

I have now filled with shell v power 3 times,putting £40 in each time and have found that despite getting 2 litres less for £40 than with regular unleaded,the miles it is returning is virtually identical and if anything a handfull more! On top of this the car does feel noticably smoother esp when starting from cold and it is obviously going to be better for your engine than the regular crap.As for any increase in power, this would probably only be proved with a dyno run.

So if you have been like me and tried to save money by running your M car on cheap petrol i would say it is worth giving it a go.Different driving styles and use of the car may give varying results but it has worked for me so,despite it being an extra 8p per litre i shall be sticking with it.

[Nedz]

Forgot to mention that my M3 is a convertible and is not really driven hard at all.(i have an insanely fast bike powered westfield for that!)

If the car was being driven hard on a regular basis then i would've been using 99 octane petrol from the word go regardless of the extra cost.Although it does state in the handbook that the engine is designed to run on the higher octane stuff,im told that the ecu will adjust the engines settings so it will run perfectly safely on 95 octane but the trade off will be a slight loss in performance/economy.