That means all fuel sold in the UK meets the British Standards. It does not mean all purchased at the pumps in the UK is exactly the same quality. This argument has been done to death. Skidpan loves supermarket fuel in his cars. He probably has shares in Asda and Tesco. Personally I'd listen to your garage. I never touch supermarket fuel. My car runs definitely runs worse on it.

All fuel sold is exactly the same quality and from a small number of depots, its simply different brands have different snake oil in them which BS does not specify. I buy Supermarket fuel because all my cars in the past 30 or so years have been fine on it. It meets the BS quality which is what manufacturers specify.

I have never noticed any of my cars running better on branded fuel, in fact when I raced I bought my fuel from Asda just like I always did at the time. If I had thought a few pence a litre would have given me an advantage I would have jumped at it. Plenty of trophys for my troubles.

I am fully aware that fuels are better than they were 40 or more years ago and I appreciate that the additives are partly responsible for this. But having run one car for 113,000 miles form new almost solely on supermarket fuel I am realistic enough to realise that the additives were more than adequate since the car was running perfectly and passing its MOT's on emmisions with no issues.

There is one major factor that keeps modern engines clean compared to their aincient cousins and its called fuel injection. Wheras a carburettor would meter the fuel in an OK manner injection and the sensors in the engine and exhaust ensure that the optimum fueling is achieved all the time. Cold running with cars was a very dirty affair with most owners struggling to operate the choke knob in anything like the optimum way, guilty myself. This clean running ensures that engines do not get gummed up like they did in the past, my first car required a scheduled de-coke every 30,000 miles and the owners handbook detailed exactly how to do it.

If you wish to belive that branded fuels are better go ahead and keep spending your money, why should I care. What I do care about are owners using garages that are so incompetent that they use the supermarket fuel arguement the moment they cannot find a fault. And that includes some franchised dealers.

I have suggested on more than one occation that the owners get the garage to write a report stating that supermarket fuel was/is to blame for their cars problems. On every occation the garage has refused.