Fuel grade and the market?

[VicVictory]

Will there be an effect on a car's designed fuel grade and consumer preference in the marketplace?

By that, I mean that currently, designing an engine for the highest octane allowed (by a scenario, by a contest, by the game, whatever), even if it's higher than what would be considered "normal", is essentially just giving away free RON/AKI to the builder to play. From what I've seen of Der Bayer's contest calculations as far as fuel cost to the buyer, it makes a minimal difference, and likely two otherwise identical cars with only different tuning for regular and premium fuel would easily go to the premium fuel model in the simulations. (correct me if I'm wrong, of course)

Now, maybe Europe's market is different, since you have mandated higher grade fuels, but that is totally not the way it works in the US. People don't like paying for premium if they don't have to. Cars that REQUIRE premium gas are generally high performance and/or luxury models (Mercedes, WRX or Evo, etc.). Only a couple "regular" passenger cars have to use fuel, such as the turbo version of the new Dodge Dart (and I bet you $$ that a good chunk of buyers aren't aware of this and are going to knock their engines to death on 87 AKI).

Will the market, at least for areas/times that do NOT have required use of high-grade fuels reflect this preference?

[Daffyflyer]

I think there will be two ways in which fuel grade effects the market, one will be the difference in fuel cost, which at least where I live can be about 5% more for premium. We may need to make buyers more picky about fuel costs than they are in Der Bayer's forum challenge though.

The other will be the availability of higher grade fuels, for example many Japanese market sportscars had to be detuned for the Australian, US and some Euro markets, as we didn't have the availability of 98Ron and higher fuels when they did. It's part of the reason why an Australian market S15 made 147kw instead of 162kw, why the Australian S2000 made 176kw instead of 183kw, and why my 130kw V6 Lantis makes 26kw more than a Euro/Aus spec Astina