The alternative HCCI combustion mode presents a possible means for decreasing the Pollution with respect to conventional gasoline or diesel engines, while maintaining the efficiency of a diesel engine or even increasing it. This paper investigates the possibility Of using gasoline in an HCCI engine and analyzes the autoignition of gasoline in such an engine. The compression ratio that has been used is 13.5, keeping the inlet temperature at 70 degrees C, varying the equivalence ratio from 0.3 to 0.54, and the EGR (represented by N-2) ratio from 0 to 37 vol%. For comparison, a PRF95 and a Surrogate containing 11 vol% n-heptane, 59 vol% iso-octane, and 30 vol% toluene are used. A previously validated kinetic surrogate mechanism is Used to analyze the experiments and to yield possible explanations to kinetic phenomena. From this work, it seems quite possible to use the high octane-rated gasoline for autoignition purposes, even Under lean inlet conditions. Furthermore, it appeared that gasoline and its Surrogate, unlike PRF95, show a three-stage autoignition. Since the PRF95 does not contain toluene, it is Suggested by the Kinetic mechanism that the benzyl radical, issued from toluene, causes this so-defined "obstructed preignition" and delaying thereby the final ignition for gasoline and its surrogate. The results of the kinetic mechanism supporting this explanation are shown in this paper. (C) 2008 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.