Jim Hightower

The oil giants spend millions to get you to buy their Super-Premium, 92 Octane gasoline.

But, unless you re driving a Rolls Royce or unless you ve got an old clunker with an engine knocking louder than a bill collector buying that extra octane is as useless as dumping Vitamin-C pills in your tank.

Public Citizen a non-profit consumer group says nearly all of our cars and trucks are made to run on plain-old-Regular 87 octane. Look it up! In your owner s manual. I looked up my Taurus today: 87 octane.

The only real difference between Regular and Super-Premium ... is about 15 cents a gallon. And by needlessly tanking up on their high-priced gas, we re handing as much as $3 Billion a year to the guys in the limousines.

Selling you on the idea that Super-Premium equals extra power is Myth Number One. Octane doesn t even measure gasoline s punch so HIGH octane adds absolutely ZERO ... POWER.

Myth Number Two is that you need to buy Super-Premium gasoline to keep your engine clean. Wrong! Regular gasoline has the same cleansing detergents as the high-priced stuff. Worse, some of the stuff added to produce higher octane actually causes buildup of engine deposits.

Now to really give you gas that extra 15 cents you pay for Super-Premium buys extra pollution for all of us. Yeah, High-Octane produces more toxic emissions from your car, including benzene a Big-Time, cancer-causing pollutant.

Is this fun, or what?

You can stop the $3 Billion, air-polluting Joy Ride that Big Oil s taking at our expense. Just ease on down a few feet to that Regular pump.

This is Jim Hightower saying, the power is in your hands ... literally. Just Say No to their snake oil.