Early Models

Early model petrol engines were extremely large and temperamental pieces of hardware, with power outputs out of all relation to their size. Simple in design and slow in operation, they could be coaxed to run on what we would today regard as very poor quality gasoline.

Revolutions per minute, if they were measured at all, were scaled in hundreds and not thousands, and horsepower seemed a rather optimistic term to apply to a machine that often needed a strong wind and the will of God behind it for smooth operation.

But that is all history. Over the years, encouraged by economic goals and by wars, the internal combustion engine and the fuels that drive it have undergone changes that make them as similar to their predecessors as we are to cavemen—structurally similar, but much more refined.

The modern engine is a complex piece of highly engineered machinery that produces a high power output through sophistication of design, not from brute force and ignorance like its forebears.

And this has meant a continual improvement in fuels, to keep pace in the constant race for technical perfection.

Today, there are five main requirements for an acceptable gasoline conforming to contemporary standards. It must be clean (more important than it sounds), it must be volatile, have a definite octane quality, be stable and should, preferably, have its performance rating improved by positive performance additives.