[mobythevan]

I can see where you are coming from and questioning why higher octane came about. There is nothing wrong with that. I would look at race cars that have no emission requirement and are concerned about efficiency for one possible answer. A lot of race cars are trying to squeeze as much power out of a gallon of gas as possible and get it to the tires to do work(as opposed to lost heat and losses out the tailpipe). We look to salt flat cars to learn more about aero for economy and I think we can look at race cars to learn more about squeezing power out of the fuel. Not all race car engine design will concern us because they operate in a small poewr band typically, but there are other tricks to be learned. I am not trying to sway your ideas, this aspect is interesting to me because of my tinkering with E85 to get more economy out of it.