Stingc, I'm guessing all your family vehicles are fairly recent and performance oriented? For comparison, among myself and siblings we have about 15 vehicles registered. Two are Diesels, none of the gassers recommend higher than 87 octane.
The last numbers I read were part of a government study a few years ago. It was dated for 2000 models and put cars requiring premium at ~5%. I assume the number has gone up since with the increasing number of higher performance vehicles, but at the same time knock sensors and engine computers are improving. "Requiring premium" is slowly morphing to "responds well to premium."
I just googled but couldn't find anything recent. Too many garbage hits.
I've never seen a breakdown of vehicles that do and do not tune themselves according to gasoline performance. That's a relatively recent development, say mid/late 90's, so I assume it remains a growing minority. Might be interesting to bring a few dealer techs into the discussion. Make sure we represent the Aveos with the Vettes. I honestly don't know how else to determine what's really rolling off the dealer lots without visiting a few. A dangerous project.
Anyway, we're falling into the usual generalization trap. "Most, many, usually, old, new," etc. In the end we're talking about a poster's specific vehicle, age, condition, etc, and where they're used, no? Makes it tough to give blanket recommendations but that's where we get into trouble.
As shakran said...
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Basically, check your owner's manual
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