zoomee

Audi dealership said 89 works fine and wouldn't show a difference... I almost immediately noticed a difference between the 93 I normally use and the 89 gas.

Any of you have the same experience???

Formulaonefan

I made that mistake when I first bought my 4.2 I will never do that again

urq20vt

The car will run on it, but the computer has to dial back the timing so it will be slower. My wife once made the mistake of putting 85 octane in my A6 2.7T. That was a miserable week as I ran that crap out of the tank.

The idiot service advisor at my local dealer said that my 2.7T would run BETTER on 87 octane. He actually seemed to believe it. The sad part is that another customer there believed it as well. I bit my tongue, smiled and walked away.

oskidunker

Mid grade runs fine in my 2.7T but if I use regular the gas milage drops about 4 miles per gallon. No difference that I can tell between Prremium and mid grade. Turbo still performs well.Maybe with no Turbo you notice it more.

RadeRadak

If you're going to spend $45,000+ dollars on a car, why in hell on earth are you going to put cheap gas into it??? Luxury cars require luxury gas; these aren't Mercury Sables. If you can gussy up for the car, you should be able to gussy up for the gas it requires.

oskidunker

As I said, I notice no difference so to me it's a waste of money. Drove the 2001 for 3 years. Ran great. turned it in yesterday and no one complained because I didn't use Premium.What does the price of the car have to do with throwing money away?

RadeRadak

Its not trowing money away if the car was specifically designed to run on premium gas. If you want something to last, you take care of it. Obviously Audi didn't decide "Premium Fuel Required" because they secretly own oil refineries the world over. These are highly complex engines running 5 valvs per cylinder--not pushrod engines with Rochchester mechanical fuel injection systems. All i say is that Audi built the car so they obiously know what it should be running on.

meq123

It's just how the engine was designed (compression/timing/knock sensors). For optimum power Audi engines need the octane boost of hi-test, but they work just fine on lower grades - albeit with the knock sensors kicking-in etc.

My manual (at least) states 87 oct & up is acceptable.

SEN5241

A friend of mine works in the gas business, and he says most stations only have two tanks. They make midgrade by mixing three parts 89 and one part 93. You'll notice that most mid-grade prices are a 50/50 average of the 89 price and 93 price. Cheaper to pump 12 gallons of regular and 4 gallons of premium if you want. Of course, I'll stick with the premium.