RAY: I was on a holiday recently, and I found my car in need of petrol. I was on a secondary road, and I pulled into one of these self-service gas stations, just like tens of thousands of self-service gas stations around the country. I pulled up to one of the many pumps that they all have, and I absentmindedly reached for the nozzle. I was just about to fill up my tank when I noticed the gas was a little on the expensive side. Now, I know gas prices have gone up recently, but this was way up there. It was $4.59 a gallon, and I said, "Whoa." What kind of a vehicle uses that stuff? And now, I should add, that I could have put this gas in my tank, and my car would have run on it, I'm sure. Anyway, I looked around and saw a car on the lift, and I knew immediately why this gas was $4.59 a gallon. I went to one of the other pumps and filled up with the cheaper stuff.

TOM: Well, there goes my answer.

RAY: What was your answer?

TOM: That you were in a foreign country.

RAY: But you know I hadn't gone any place -- how can I have been in a foreign country if I hadn't left the country? What I saw on the lift was a car that had numbers on it...

TOM: A racecar.

RAY: Its doors were welded shut, and it had no glass. It was in fact a racecar. And this guy must have been the local gas station where all the racecar drivers -- there must have been a track nearby -- came to get their gas. This gas was 110 octane.

TOM: Really, 110 octane.

RAY: 110 octane. Pretty good, huh?

TOM: That's good.

RAY: Do we have a winner?

TOM: Yeah. The winner is Sean Duffy from Flagstaff, Arizona, and for having his answer selected at random from all the answers that we got, Sean is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. With that gift certificate he can get a copy of our CD/Drink Coaster, "Car Talk, Car Tunes, America's Best Disrespectful Car Songs." Wow, you lucky guy.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]