Petrol ‘way more watery than I expected’, reports confused motorist

Here’s TopGear.com’s roving correspondent, Cory Spondent, with his mostly incorrect exclusives from the world of motoring

A British driver’s worldview was shattered this week after discovering petrol to be considerably less viscous than he’d always imagined.

“I didn’t expect it to be this… sloshy,” announced Talbot Solara, 29, speaking from the forecourt of his local supermarket filling station. “How can something so explodey be so damp?”

Brandishing a small beaker of regular E10 petrol like Erin Brockovich or something, Mr Solara admitted he’d always believed petrol to be “thicker, somehow. More substantial. Like Ribena. Or Toilet Duck".

Solara claims he’d expected the popular hydrocarbon-based fuelstuff to have ‘more body to it’, given its price point and combustive capabilities.

“One pound forty a litre for that? It just feels cheap,” he mused, contemplatively swirling the car-juice around his beaker as one might a fine wine. “Like they’ve watered it down.”

When informed that petrol's low viscosity is essential for efficient combustion, Solara dismissed the explanation as “exactly what you’d expect Big Oil to say".

Solara also expressed disappointment at petrol's pale-yellow appearance.

“I thought it'd be proper black, like in cartoons,” he continued. “Or at least a nice deep red, like cherry Tango. Look at it! Insipid. I’ve had chamomile teas with more chromatic intensity.”

Solara suggested he was considering switching to diesel, which, he imagined, “looks darker, oilier, like something you can stand up a spoon in".

Upon learning diesel is also relatively thin, Solara posited fuel companies should investigate cornstarch as a potential thickening solution. “If it’s good enough for gravy,” he suggested, “it’s good enough for internal combustion.”

While remaining dissatisfied by petrol's watery consistency, Solara expressed no concerns whatsoever about the underlying principle of filling a metal box with explosive liquid and setting fire to it several thousand times a minute.