getting the lead out
As a mechanic with a lifetime of experience of working on classic engines and now the general manager of Auto Restorations, Allan Wylie is ideally placed to give a reasoned, unbiased and informed report on how changes to fuel have and will continue to have an effect on engines in older cars. Story and photos by Allan Wylie
Acouple of years ago I bought a copy of New Zealand’s longest established auto magazine and found in it a rant by a veteran columnist against unleaded petrol. The column was short on facts but long on rhetoric. The writer had evidently taken the attitude that unleaded petrol was A Bad Thing; even the smell and colour came in for criticism.
Surely I must have mistakenly picked up an old edition of the magazine – wasn’t this debate done and dusted years ago? But no, it was the latest edition and it got me thinking about the whole extraordinary saga of the addition to and then removal of lead additives from New Zealand’s public petrol supply. It’s now seventeen years since fuel containing tetra-ethyl lead was phased out – indeed, outlawed for use in road vehicles – and this seems a good distance from which to look back and put these events in perspective.
BACKGROUND
Petrol containing tetra-ethyl lead was first sold in New Zealand in 1933, ten years after its introduction in the USA.
The compound had first been tried as a fuel additive by General Motors engineer Thomas Midgley in his quest to find a chemical that would raise the octane rating, or knock resistance, of gasoline.
Tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) was remarkably effective at this in concentrations as low as one part TEL to a thousand parts of gasoline. Texaco was the first oil company to introduce “ethyl” petrol to New Zealand and so began the “octane race”.
Competitors Mobil, Atlantic, Shell and Europa soon introduced their own higher (about 78) octane grades, all but Shell using TEL to boost the octane rating of lower-octane petrol.
Shell used a refinery process, demonstrating that TEL was not the only route to higher octane ratings. It was a cost-effective one though, probably the main reason for its universal adoption by all suppliers in later years.
Before being blended with petrol for sale to the public, TEL had proved its worth in racing where its anti-knock properties had permitted racers to raise the compression ratios and/or supercharger boost pressures of their engines, resulting in a raised power output.
It is probably here that the association of high-octane fuel with high performance first took hold in the public mind.
While high compression engines need high-octane fuel to produce full power without destructive detonation, low compression engines get no benefit from it at all.
In spite of this, a myth has grown up which persists to this day, partly due to misleading advertising by oil companies, that high-octane fuel will give any engine more “pep”.
Increasing petrol octane ratings after the introduction of TEL allowed car manufacturers to raise compression ratios, thereby making their engines more efficient and powerful.
Both compression ratios and octane ratings continued to rise during the 1930s but the octane ratings of the fuels in New Zealand didn’t always keep pace with the octane requirements of some imported cars. Some overseas manufacturers produced special low compression “colonial” models to allow for this.
As well as raising the octane rating of petrol, TEL had another beneficial side effect. It protected exhaust valve seats from the hammering action of the valves and stopped the seats from “receding” or wearing away.
Use of TEL in petrol was not without its problems though. At first, lead would build up in the combustion chambers of engines and “scavenger” chemicals ethylene dibromide and ethylene dichloride had to be added to the mix to combat this.
Corrosive compounds formed by the combustion of TEL attacked the exhaust valve steels then in use, so improved valve materials had to be developed to resist burning.
Electrically conductive lead compounds were deposited on spark plug insulators, shorting them out and causing misfiring.
This “lead fouling” became critical during World War 2 when large amounts of TEL were added to aircraft fuel to raise its octane rating for supercharged piston engines. Allied bomber pilots would sometimes find they couldn’t attain full power over drop zones in Germany because the lead that had built up on the plugs during the cruise to the target, made them misfire badly when the throttles were opened wide.
DEADLY POISON
Then there were the health issues. Lead is a deadly neurotoxin and in the form of TEL, the human body readily absorbs it. Too much of it can cause blindness, deafness, kidney failure, convulsions and hallucinations.
The risks were not heeded at first and many people who worked with TEL were poisoned, some fatally, while others were left with permanent psychosis.
Thomas Midgley himself suffered lead poisoning and had to take a break from his work to recover. This did not stop him from later taking part in a bizarre publicity stunt in which he poured TEL on his hands and held a beaker of it up to his nose to show how “safe” it was.
This sort of deliberate misinformation about the risks of TEL became typical of the Ethyl Corporation and its successors and has continued until recently, if not to the present day.
In fact, they were well aware of the material’s toxicity and, after many poisonings, were forced by an investigating committee in the USA in 1926 to institute strict handling procedures in their plants to protect workers’ health.
Even so, the committee found no reason to prohibit the sale of gasoline with a tiny amount of TEL in it, although it did recommend that further investigation be carried out under the supervision of the Surgeon General. This was never done.
In the late 1940s a shipment of drums of TEL fluid arrived in Auckland for blending with petrol. Local union leaders, seeing the elaborate protective clothing oil company staff donned to collect the drums at the wharf, became alarmed at the risks they felt their members were being exposed to for the sake of “big business profits”.
In those days trade unions were powerful and militant and their leader, Jim Roberts, was soon being quoted in newspapers as saying the TEL was “so dangerous that a single package could devastate the whole city of Auckland”. The Auckland drums were delivered without trouble but when some more were to be unloaded at Lyttelton, unions initially refused to handle them or to let anyone else do so.
After a lot of emotionally charged argument, it was finally agreed oil company officials could explain the facts to the wharfies, but only in the presence of the local Medical Officer of Health to make sure “big business” didn’t put one across them. Ironically, the same sort of hyperbole and scaremongering that accompanied this event was to be repeated decades later when lead additives were removed from fuel.
PROPOGANDA
Through the next few decades the use of leaded fuel continued worldwide. In the USA in particular some individuals and organisations concerned about public health would occasionally raise concerns about the effects on the populace of all that lead being sprayed around the environment.
Such concerns never gained much traction though, in large part because nearly all the research on lead in the environment was being done or paid for by the lead industry itself. Any research that seemed to indicate a link between TEL and human blood-lead levels had its funding withdrawn, and the Ethyl Corporation’s own laboratory, headed by Robert Kehoe, continued to produce a steady stream of “findings” about how safe TEL was.
In addition, public authorities like the Surgeon General’s office and the Public Health Service, who might have been expected to keep the use of such a deadly and persistent poison under close scrutiny, appeared to believe, “If it’s good for business, it’s good for America” and simply accepted the lead industry’s assurances that all was well.
Kehoe came to the conclusion that there was a “natural” level of lead in human blood and that the amount of lead being detected in Americans’ blood was no cause for concern.
Another thing that made it hard to prove a link between TEL and lead in blood is the fact that TEL was not the only source of environmental lead. It’s one thing to find lead in a person’s blood but quite another to prove how it got there.
The link between leaded paint and high lead levels in humans was well known and whenever concerns were raised about lead poisoning in humans, the TEL industry would point the finger at the leaded paint industry and the paint industry would point right back.
(That TEL was the major source of environmental lead now seems beyond doubt. Since leaded fuel was phased out in the USA, the bloodlead levels of Americans, measured in 60 cities across the country, had fallen by 78% between 1974 and 1991. Testing in the UK after a similar period without leaded petrol showed a drop of 66%).
GOVERNMENT REGULATION
In New Zealand, we followed world trends, lagging behind from time to time in terms of octane ratings.
Since all our vehicles were imported, we needed similar fuel to what they used in their countries of manufacture. Since 1938, maximum petrol octane levels in NZ had been controlled by government regulation, initially at 71 octane.
When America entered WW2 in 1941 their government and Britain’s agreed on a standard grade (pool) petrol of 80 octane for use by all the allies in fighting the war.
New Zealand started getting this petrol in September 1942. The high TEL content wreaked havoc in the New Zealand vehicle fleet causing serious corrosion problems to exhaust valves, exhaust systems, etc. and leading to acute shortages of valves, spark plugs and other vital parts.
A solution was found when New Zealand’s minister to Washington and future prime minister, Walter Nash, appealed to the allies for a special supply arrangement.
A petrol from the Talara refinery in Peru was found to fit the bill, with very little TEL and an octane rating of 71.
New Zealand continued to import this petrol beyond the end of the war until 1948.
After that, maximum permitted octane levels were gradually allowed to rise, to 72 in 1948, 79 in 1954 and 83 in 1960. In 1961 a Super grade with 93 octane was added to cater for newer cars with higher octane requirements and this was boosted again to 96 in 1964. Most of these octane increases were gained by increasing the amount of TEL in the fuel until by 1974 New Zealand 96 had .84 grams per litre.
Although corrosion-resistant valve steels were commonplace by then, other parts such as spark plugs and exhaust systems were corroding away faster due to the high TEL content.
A major change to NZ’s petrol supply had come in 1964 with the commissioning of the Marsden Point oil refinery. This was a joint venture between 5 oil companies and the New Zealand government and meant that, for the first time, all the country’s petrol supplies would be refined in New Zealand. It also meant everybody’s petrol was the same so no matter what brand you bought, you got the same fuel.
BEGINNING OF TH END
Beginning with Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which led to the phasing out of the insecticide DDT, people in the developed world started to take notice and to care about how humankind seemed to be despoiling its environment.
One issue that kept cropping up was the amount of lead spread around the world by leaded petrol. A 1983 report by Britain’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution concluded, “It is doubtful whether any part of the earth’s surface or any form of life remains uncontaminated by anthropogenic (man-made) lead”.
The first telling blow against lead additives in fuel was dealt by CALTECH geo-chemist Dr. Clair Patterson who is perhaps best known for establishing the age of the earth. In 1964 he published the results of his research titled, Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man.
By analysing the bones of preColumbian Americans, Patterson was able to prove humans don’t have naturally occurring lead in their bodies and that all the lead in latter-day humans is man-made. He also showed there was 1000 times more lead in the atmosphere when he did his research than in pre-industrial times.
Representatives of the Ethyl Corporation visited Patterson and tried to, in his own words, “buy me out through research support that would yield results favourable to their cause”.
Instead of accepting this “golden gag”, Patterson gave a lecture in which he criticised the activities of Ethyl Corporation and predicted the end of their TEL empire. He paid a high personal price for his outspokenness – his contracts with the Public Health Service and the American Petroleum Institute were not renewed and
The final nail in the coffin of leaded fuel was hammered home by the same corporation that had introduced it –
General Motors
members of the board at CALTECH leaned on his head of department to try to have him fired. He had the last laugh though as his prediction soon started to come true, though surely not in the way he had expected.
R.I.P. TEL
Continuing research into the toxic effects of lead by individuals outside the lead industry was producing more and more alarming results.
It showed that damage was done to the human brain at much lower lead levels than was previously thought. Children’s brains are especially susceptible to impaired cognitive function caused by lead, reducing their ability to learn. Strong links were also shown between high blood lead levels and anti-social behaviour, leading some neurologists to speculate on a link between the increasing use of TEL and a post-WW2 rise in juvenile delinquency.
In 1970 the USA’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced a regulation requiring a phased reduction of the amount of TEL used in petrol. In an action that has parallels with the tobacco industry when governments moved to restrict the sale of its poisonous products, the Ethyl Corporation sued the EPA to have the regulation overturned, thereby delaying it for several years as it worked its way through the courts.
The final nail in the coffin of leaded fuel was hammered home by the same corporation that had introduced it – General Motors.
US auto manufacturers were under pressure to meet increasingly stringent emissions limits and in early 1970 Ed Cole, president of GM, announced that his company would introduce catalytic converters from 1974. Fitted to a car’s exhaust system, these would clean a range of pollutants from the exhaust gases and help meet the new limits.
There was just one catch, a big one. They were not compatible with leaded fuel.
It may be that GM saw the writing on the wall and knew that TEL would soon be forced from the market by health concerns anyway so decided to quit while they were ahead. They had sold half of Ethyl Corporation some time before so only had to suffer half the loss of profits when that company’s sales dwindled.
ULP GOES GLOBAL
Japan led the world in phasing out leaded petrol and once car-making giants like it and the USA started to go lead-free, it was inevitable that car engines would evolve to suit unleaded petrol, just as they had evolved when TEL was introduced. Sooner or later, other nations that bought these cars must fall into line if they were to reap the full benefits of their new technology.
In New Zealand, the Clean Air Council, a government advisory body, recommended in 1974 that our country too should eliminate lead from fuel. Little was done until the Lange Labour government made the decision to go unleaded in 1984, citing risk to public health as the main reason.
The implementation of the lead phaseout was characterised by procrastination, buck-passing and avoidance by some of the government agencies involved. These included the Ministries of Energy, Commerce, Health, Science and Research, the Ministry for the Environment, the Clean Air Council and the Toxic Substances board.
Some of these were openly skeptical about whether leaded petrol posed a health risk to the citizens of clean, green New Zealand, even while an increasing number of studies showed that it did. Some of those responsible for making decisions dragged their feet in the hope that industry players such as the oil companies would phase out TEL by themselves without government intervention, but in the end regulation proved necessary. The oil companies actually kept a low profile, as well they might, since they would still be selling their product, leaded or not.
BRIBERY AND UNDUE INFLUENCE
Working hard to maintain the status quo was what remained of the Ethyl Corporation.
Since the phase-out of TEL from major markets overseas, the only plant still making it was Associated Octel, an Ethyl subsidiary in Ellesmere Port, UK. The fact that the fight to retain leaded fuel had been lost in the USA did not discourage them from using every means available, fair or foul, to continue selling it elsewhere.
It was Associated Octel, by then called Innospec, that was later fined 25 million dollars in a US court for bribing Indonesian officials to delay the phaseout of leaded petrol in their country by six years. They also pleaded guilty in the same court action to paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
While there is no suggestion that NZ officials were bribed, they were certainly the subjects of assiduous lobbying by Associated Octel’s representatives here who made a point of developing close relationships with them, doing everything they could to influence their decisions away from going lead-free.
They were obviously effective as Dr Clair Patterson, the CALTECH researcher and world authority on lead in the environment, wrote after a visit to New Zealand in 1983 that he had observed “... an unhealthy liaison between the lead alkyl industries and public health officials in New Zealand... I was struck by the remarkable similarity of the New Zealand health officials’ attitude and arguments with those of officials of the Ethyl Corporation and Associated Octel”.
NEW ZEALAND PHASE-OUT BEGINS
In 1987 leaded 91-octane petrol was withdrawn from sale and replaced by 91 octane ULP.
Some predictions had appeared in the car hobby press that ULP might damage the engines of “older” cars but details were hard to come by in those preinternet days. It seemed the most likely damage would be recession, or rapid wear, of exhaust valve seats, but which cars were susceptible and under what circumstances it might occur, nobody seemed to know.
Most reports that did appear were of the alarmist “the sky is falling” variety and contained little useful information. Perhaps as a result of these reports, most owners of old cars shunned the new 91 ULP and switched from 91 to 96 octane leaded fuel. While it too would eventually be phased out, few owners took any steps to prepare for that time and most just waited for the sky to fall.
The Minister of Energy announced in 1995 that September 30th, 1996 would be the last day leaded petrol could be legally sold for road vehicles in New Zealand. As that date approached the debate about the end of leaded fuel began to heat up.
Associated Octel placed scaremonger-ing ads in the major daily papers headed, “Unleaded Petrol and Cancer” which stressed the carcinogenic effects of increased benzene emissions that would result from the use of ULP. This is a valid point, but when it was made by a company advocating the continued use of an even more dangerous compound (TEL) it carried little weight. It also ignored the fact that the scavenger chemicals added to leaded fuel produced carcinogenic compounds of their own during combustion.
The ads also said lead was “a naturally occurring toxin as are alcohol, sugar and salt”.
Government-sponsored ads made the public aware that “older” vehicles might suffer from valve seat recession and announced that an additive, Valvemaster, would be available for purchase at all petrol outlets. This product (also made by Associated Octel) would protect valve seats once the protective effect of lead was withdrawn.
The part played by the NZ hobby car press in the debate was extraordinary, and disappointing to readers who looked to them for guidance. One might have expected at least some journalists would investigate the pros and cons of running old cars on unleaded petrol and inform their readers about these, perhaps even running “how to” articles on making the switch from leaded fuel to ULP so they could be prepared for a lead-free world.
Instead, they all adopted a stridently anti-ULP approach. Associated Octel had sought out allies in its campaign to continue the supply of leaded fuel and had evidently found some in the hobby car press who were only too happy to push its barrow. They were all singing from the same song sheet and the song was written by Associated Octel.
None of them mentioned that, apart from the risk of valve seat recession to some engines, most classic car owners could look forward to reduced engine
wear on ULP and their spark plugs and exhaust systems would last almost forever.
Even the valve seat issue could be insured against by adding a squirt or two of Valvemaster at top-up time, a minor expense and inconvenience at worst.
Instead, columnists fulminated about their “right” to continue using leaded petrol in their cars and exhorted readers to contact their local MP and make a political issue of it.
Some suggested that the government had an ulterior motive for phasing lead out – it wasn’t for health reasons like they said but because catalytic converters on new cars would be ruined by lead, as if that wasn’t a compelling reason on its own. There was a grain of truth in this as, while the 1984 government had decided to go lead-free to protect Kiwis’ health, in the end it was less honourable reasons of an economic and technical nature that ensured that their successors went through with it.
Others fretted that their precious classic cars would be “consigned to the scrapheap”.
Those few old-car owners who had switched to unleaded 91 when it first became available must have wondered what all this weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth was about. They’d had up to nine years of mostly trouble-free running on ULP and the sky hadn’t fallen one bit.
ULP PROBLEMS
The day finally came when 96 ULP began to be supplied to service stations and leaded petrol gradually disappeared as supplies were used up.
It wasn’t long before problems started to occur with the new fuel. The oil companies (and remember, they all sold the same fuel from the same refinery) had made a serious blunder in formulating the new 96 ULP with too high an aromatic content and these aromatics attacked the elastomers (synthetic rubber) in the fuel systems of some older vehicles causing hoses, petrol cap seals, filter bowl gaskets, etc. to soften and swell.
How they got it so wrong when New Zealand was far from the first country to introduce 96 ULP is not clear, but get it wrong they did.
The result was fuel leaks, a few of which caused fires. These were widely reported in the mass media and in no time a kind of frenzy was whipped up,
The oil companies had made a serious blunder in formulating the new 96 ULP. How they got it so wrong when NZ was far from the first country to introduce it is not clear, but get it wrong they did.
with anxious drivers calling talkback radio saying they were too scared to start their car in case it “blew up”.
Leadheads chimed in with cries of, “We told you this stuff was no good” and suddenly the oil companies, who had hitherto remained aloof from the leaded/unleaded debate, were in almost everybody’s bad books.
They responded quickly, lowering the aromatic content of all subsequent supplies of 96 ULP and the problem of swelling elastomers disappeared. Fire Service records show the number of vehicle fires during that period was no higher than average but the damage to the reputation of 96 ULP, and by extension the oil companies, had been done.
A flood of negative reports appeared in the mass media, usually quoting disgruntled motorists whose car’s – broken cam belt, blown head gasket, spun big end bearing – just had to be caused by that new fuel.
Few, if any, reporters bothered to seek expert advice on these stories and the motorists’ misattributed complaints were reported as facts.
The vast majority of cars had no trouble at all with ULP but some older cars did have real problems with it. The most common complaint was rough running, misfiring and hard starting.
Another symptom suffered by a few cars was “pinking” or combustion knock when no such behaviour had occurred on 96 leaded fuel.
Since octane rating is a measure of a fuel’s resistance to knock, it was clear the true octane rating of the new fuel didn’t match that of the old – either the new fuel was lower than 96 or the old fuel must have been higher. After a while, the octane rating of premium ULP was revised down to 95, perhaps a more accurate indication of where it had been all along.
The oil companies were inundated with complaints from motorists about the way their cars misbehaved on ULP and, in response, produced a pamphlet advising the public how to adapt to it.
Essentially, it stated that ULP was less tolerant of out-of-tune engines than leaded fuel had been and that motorists who were experiencing problems should have their engines tuned to suit the new fuel. It also stated that some engines would need to use a hotter grade of spark plug than before to prevent the fouling which caused symptoms of misfiring, etc.
This was useful and accurate advice but, by this time, distrust of the oil companies was so widespread that many drivers of classic cars, who might have benefited from it, chose to disregard it.
HUCKSTERS
This climate of apprehension and confusion proved ideal for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to flourish in, all too ready to provide a “solution” to the ULP “problem”.
A range of expensive metal canisters appeared on the local market for fitting to a vehicle’s fuel line so petrol would flow through them on its way to the engine. They contained metallic tin and were claimed to “ionize” the fuel and to prevent valve seat recession, increase power, reduce fuel consumption and prevent pinking.
It stands to reason that if the canisters really did all this they would be standard equipment on every car made. No doubt conspiracy theorists will have a ready explanation why this is not so.
The promoters of these products could not provide any more than anecdotal evidence that their claims were true but gullible people bought them anyway. Whenever their dubious claims were challenged, the promoters of the most popular brand of canister would invite the skeptic to “buy one and try it”.
The New Zealand Automobile Association, concerned that its members were being fleeced, did just that and had it scientifically tested by the University of Melbourne to see if it lived up to its marketer’s claims. The university found the canister had no effect at all, good or bad, on the engine on which it was tested. The fact that 150,000 (marketer’s figures) of these units were sold in New Zealand only proves the truth of the old saying that there’s one born every minute. Shamefully, many canisters were sold and installed by professional mechanics whose desire to make a quick buck evidently overpowered their professional judgement.
ADDITIVES
A range of fuel additives also arrived on the market including Valvemaster, the officially sanctioned valve seat protectant, which used phosphorus suspended in kerosene as its active ingredient.
Several other products, both liquids and pills, also claimed to protect valve seats. Another class of additives claimed to raise the octane rating of ULP and some combined both functions.
The range of products and sometimes extravagant claims caused confusion among old-car owners who weren’t sure which, if any, of these products they should be using. Some were adding Valvemaster to try and cure pinking, not its function at all, and then adding more and more when it didn’t work. Belatedly, a magazine that catered for classic car owners, set up an ill-conceived test using three old cars of the same type, one using a canister, one a valve seat protectant and the other nothing at all in an attempt to prove which worked best. As their readers soon pointed out, the test was so unscientific it had no hope of proving anything and was soon abandoned.
AVGAS
Leaded high-octane aviation gasoline (avgas) was widely used in racing engines and had for some time been available from a few petrol stations in larger centres and near motor sport venues for the use of legitimate racers.
It was illegal to use it in road vehicles as no road tax was levied on it but cans could be filled as could trailered race cars, boats, motorcycles, etc.
Following the phase-out of leaded petrol, one self-appointed spokesman for classic car owners scored a spectacular own-goal by bragging in a television
Fuels will continue to evolve as long as humankind continues to use vehicles powered by internal combustion
engines
interview that he and his mates were using avgas in their road cars. The authorities’ response was predictable and swift and the avgas bowsers closed almost overnight. Since lead was removed from fuel for road vehicles, Motorsport New Zealand has gradually phased out avgas from its various racing classes and is well on the way to becoming lead-free.
ADAPTATION
Over time, most classic car owners came to terms with ULP.
Cases of valve seat recession were rare and many cars required no changes at all, and others just a change of spark plug heat range, for trouble-free running on the new fuel.
Owners of engines whose compression ratios required an octane rating higher than 95 were not well catered for though. They could either use an octane booster additive or retard their ignition timing and suffer a small power loss.
Help finally arrived with the introduction of BP Ultimate 98 octane ULP in 2000, initially at just a few North Island sites and gradually spreading south.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
Future generations might look back on the use of lead in motor fuel as one of the great blunders of history, rather like the oncewidespread use of DDT.
Given that the pollution from lead has spread to every corner of the earth, we can only hope that its worst effects on living things are over and there will not be some still-undiscovered harm waiting to rear its head.
Fuels will continue to evolve as long as humankind continues to use vehicles powered by internal combustion engines and the extraction of oil from the earth becomes increasingly expensive.
Biofuels, usually in the form of ethanol produced from plant matter, are being used to supplement fossil fuels, and blends of petrol and ethanol, while not yet widespread in New Zealand, are commonplace in some countries.
Ethanol raises the octane rating of the petrol it is blended with and it is ironic that Thomas Midgley had experimented with it for that purpose before he hit on tetra-ethyl lead to do the job. Now that lead is no longer an option, ethanol is once more seen as a viable choice.
Its use in old cars may cause problems for their owners though. While the problems of running old cars on ULP were mostly illusory, it looks like fuels containing alcohol will cause real harm to the fuel systems of many older cars.
In New South Wales, where ethanol blends are mandatory, contributors to classic car forums are already mourning the decline of “good old ULP”.
If we ever reach the stage where all petrol contains some ethanol we may see a repeat of the sort of behaviour that accompanied the phase-out of leaded fuel.
Unless a powerful vested interest like Associated Octel gets involved, we might see a more enlightened debate this time though.
In spite of the good work being done by the NZ Federation of Motoring Clubs it is unrealistic to expect the widespread availability of straight petrol will continue indefinitely if old cars are the only ones using it – the volume just won’t be big enough to make it viable.
Those who get their kicks from fighting losing battles against the establishment will probably fight for the retention of ULP while those who are more interested in driving their old cars, will find ways to adapt them to ethanol blends.
Charles Darwin once said, “It’s not the strongest who will survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most responsive to change”. If we want to continue using our old cars, we’d better be prepared to adapt.