Advance Auto House Brand Oil

[Spector]

I go to Advance Auto a lot and happened to ask them whgat brand of oil was their best seller.

Reply: Whatever is on sale that week or month!

I also thought it was Havoline for their house brand

 

[HOndaGuy]

from what ppl say on this board, its an exact clone of havoline oil.

 

[csandste]

I think that it's identical to Chevron's Havoline for 88 cents a quart, although I have no absolute proof. Kind of funny, because I believe that SuperTech will probably soon be identical to Equilon's Havoline as soon as production is shifted from Shreveport. Although I use SuperTech, the Advance house brand is probably the better product. Lots of other house brands are Valvoline which has a large segment of private label production.

A VOA of this stuff with comparison to Havoline or Chevron would be interesting. I'm not sure if we've ever determined that Havoline and Chevron are identical.

[ July 16, 2003, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: csandste ]

 

[turbochem]

quote:

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The packaging on the bottle leads you to believe this since it reads "compare to Havoline"

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All generic products say something to that effect. For example, a night time cough medicine might say "compare to Nyquil." But usally it also states that it has no affiliation with Nyquil, etc.......

I think the "compare to..." statement could just mean that it is a comparable product......or at least a similar one.....

 

[csandste]

There are large generic drug firms which can completely duplicate drugs whose patents have expired. If it says compare to Nyquil, in general the ingredients are the same. If the patents hadn't expired there would be an infringement lawsuit. There are a few generic blending plants for motor oil. Specialty Petroleum, now a Quaker State (Pz,Shell) subsidiary was once independent.

For the most part, however, there are a limited number of refineries. I would think "compare to Havoline"--with the copyright being placed with Chevron, not Equilon--means that Chevron has some extra plant capacity that's being resold by Advance.

We all know that gasoline is largely a commodity and that most gasoline in a particular area will be from a very limited number of sources despite the different brands on the pumps. Bottled oil would have a different distribution channel, but I'm not totally convinced that something similar might not occur if it's to the oil company's advantage to do so. This would explain the varying Shell formulations that CR found. This would be very easy to do with bulk oil.

Here's a bit of speculation for those of you who like to buy name brand oils at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has a house brand tire Douglas which is made by Goodyear (Kelly). They also have a branded tire, BFGoodrich Excentia, which is exclusive to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has such large buying clout that is it possible that they control specs. on some branded oils? Others have reported that Delco oil filters at K-Mart (no longer carried) and Wal-Mart were different products, especially for non-GM applications. Could the same apply for oils? Probably not, but it's not completely impossible.

 

[csandste]

Maybe an answer to the original question should be attempted. If it is Coastal Unilube, that's a subsidiary of the El Paso corporation that does have a fairly large private label production. If that's the case then they are misleading when they state "compare to Havoline". Makes me want to get a look at a voa on the product even more than ever to see if they are duplicating the basic formulas.

 

[King Arthur]

I have never posted to this site before, but have enjoyed reading all of the great information for over a year. I was curious about the new house brand oil at Advance Auto. I sent an email to customer service at Advance Auto's web site asking if it was produced by Havoline. The packaging on the bottle leads you to believe this since it reads "compare to Havoline". Customer service responded today stating that Advance Auto Oil was infact produced by Coastal Unilube. Does any one have any experience with Coastal oil?