The behaviour of E10 when exposed to water and air is certainly not a mystery or a new discovery. If this was a boat or small engine forum, posts discussing actual problems would be far more prevalent. No dispute there either. Presuming that a hard-to-start lawnmower in the spring will have an identical knock-on effect on a car is a pretty big leap.

E10 has been commonly available for over twenty years in much of North America and over 30 years in the Pacific Northwest. It's 'new' only to certain parts of the US and now the EU. I would think that problems experienced by Joe Average car driver would have started cropping up 2-3 decades ago and not just now.

I spend a considerable amount of time in the old car hobby fooling around with vehicles that were built starting in the 50s and remaining pretty much unchanged in technology until the early 80s. Bona fide problems of physical deterioration caused by E10 are pretty much unheard of. Discounting failure of fuel system components that were long overdue for replacement anyway causes the rate to fall to virtually zero. Operational problems consist of a few cases of vapour lock in hot summer weather and hard starting when hot. Aside from that- meh. Note that these are carburetted vehicles and the two aforementioned issues would not affect an EFI equipped vehicle.

A trend that has emerged is to blame E10 for anything and everything that befalls the vehicle- whether is related to fuel or not. Sort of like blaming Obama for the international economy.

In some ways, history is repeating itself. When unleaded fuel first became popular in the early '70s there were howls of protest from enthusiasts and predictions of doom from Luddites (Leadites?) saying that our beloved old cars would soon become dinosaurs due to lack of suitable fuels. Most notably and again similar to today, there was no shortage of those that stood to profit offering magic potions to ward off the evil effects. Despite almost 40 years of readily available evidence demonstrating which cars were actually affected and how, there are still those that cling to their beliefs and go through all sorts of unnecessary trouble and expense.

 

I use Chevron Techron additive - every other fill up and I use Costco brand gasoline - premium...