Anyone see this?

[buster]

http://www.mobiloil.com/USA-English/MotorOil/Car_Care/AskMobil/Response_Valvoline_Claims.aspx

Quote:
Is Valvoline's Claim that its 5W-30 SynPower is 4 Times Better than Mobil 1 5W-30 True?
Valvoline now claims that its 5W-30 SynPower is 4 times better than Mobil 1's 5W-30 full synthetic,(they are launching a massive ad campaign on it) is this true?
-- Donnie Laskey, Winchester, KY
Answer:
We are aware of the recent advertising campaign in which Valvoline asserts that Valvoline SynPower offers four times better wear protection than Mobil 1.

ExxonMobil is not aware of any accurate technical data to support the claim that Valvoline SynPower is in any way superior to Mobil 1. All such claims must be substantiated and ExxonMobil has requested Valvoline to provide the substantiating data to support this claim immediately.


http://www.valvoline.com/synpower-wearpr...wer%2Bpromotion

Should be interesting. Oil companies are really going after synthetic market full force.LOL I see a lot more Mobil 1 commercials than in years past.

http://www.mobiloil.com/USA-English/MotorOil/Videos/TV.aspx

 

[Tempest]

4 times better than what?

Gotta' love marketing.

 

[buster]

4-ball wear test?

 

[MGregoir]

Phosphorous retention is a big component of the SN spec, what I think we may have just seen is not a shot at Mobil 1, but rather the first SN spec oil bursting out of the gate.

If you can hold the ZDDP level up and use other high quality, high performance anti-wear additives and stay inside the limits (the SN spec does not reduce any additive or detergent levels, but it does specify retention requirements), I can see performance gains.

Or maybe they are only talking about iron wear...

 

[buster]

Quote:
Mobil 1 is a registered trademark of the ExxonMobil Corporation. Results based on industry standard Sequence IVA wear test.


http://www.valvoline.com/synpower-wearpr...wer%2Bpromotion

Quote:
The Sequence IVA test evaluates a lubricant’s performance in preventing camshaft lobe wear in an overhead camshaft engine.

 

[pickled]

LOL! I love how the valvoline charts are dimensionless in terms of the wear figure or even what metal it is they are talking about. I hate marketing blitzes, but the rebates are always welcome ;-)!

 

[Camu Mahubah]

It's good to be bold, but if the statement about being 4 times gooder is good. Then Mobil 1 will simply crack the formula and get 4 times gooder. That is what we should be watching. Valvoline must surely know Mobil 1 has no intentions of copying the formula or they wouldn't have come out with this, or would they?

Could this be the result of all the high iron queries?

 

[buster]

True, but at the same time they state it's from the Seq IVA wear test and you have to have some evidence to back this up. Mobil 1 also does show higher Fe wear. Has for years. Maybe it is of some significance? At the same time, engineers in the auto industry claim it's still gold standard.

Mobil sure advertises the [censored] out of it...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theoryconcept/tags/mobil1/

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Camu Mahubah
It's good to be bold, but if the statement about being 4 times gooder is good....


You gooder use the correct word or else....

 

[pickled]

The key is to show quantities and units. I hate it when marketeers lie with statistics and use deceiving graphical representations of tabular data that may bear no practical benefit just to have a rally cry. It gives stats guys, like myself, a bad rap when the rest of the story breaks. Say for instance the wear at the end was 1 ppm vs. 0.25 ppm on a single type of metal (iron) and all the rest of the wear metals were at parity does it truly matter? Sorry guys I've just had to deal with enough claims validation in my day to be a really hard core skeptic...I'm sure the oil is good, but marketing blitzes get me down.

 

[MGregoir]

I liked the marketing material on the Castrol SLX Professional 4718 oil, as it actually showed how much better it was than the GM spec and GF-4 spec in the brochure. I think the stuff is far better than Syntec and in a similar class to Pennzoil Platinum, Mobil 1 and Petro-Canada Turbo (Petro-Canada's HTO-06 oil).

 

[pickled]

That sounds like responsible marketing...I'll have to check that one out. Thanks MGregoir.

 

[buster]

Speaking of Petro-Canada's HTO-06 oil, they ended up making a separate oil just to meet that spec.

 

[FZ1]

Ridiculous and discredits Valvoline.

 

[Johnny]

I hope Exxon/Mobil nails their hide to the wall.

 

[MGregoir]

The ironic thing is that I believe ExxonMobil makes the base oils and additive package for SynPower, Valvoline is the blender/packager.

 

[buster]

Originally Posted By: MGregoir
The ironic thing is that I believe ExxonMobil makes the base oils and additive package for SynPower, Valvoline is the blender/packager.


I don't think so. Base oils maybe.

I wonder if this is a new Valvoline formulation? The results could be true who knows..

You have to admit, that is a cool ad.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

If it's 4x better, then why doesn't Porche use Valvoline 0w-40 instead of M1 ??

 

[JohnBrowning]

buster shame on you! Perpuateing that bad rumor or myth of higher iron wear. I mean what type of differences are we talking about single digit difference in the noise floor between M1 and most other products? How come we do not see any increased wear with M1 in Toyota's? Is the steel in a Toyota impervious to M1 or something? Low M1 haters make it sound like their is some huge staticly significant difference inthe wear from M1 to another brand inthe same application and same interval so summer compared to summer not a Winter OCI and a Summer OCI. It is usualy a single digit difference so even if it is 4-5 ppm lower what significance is that when failure is 150PPM and concern is 50PPM?

 

[buster]

John, I didn't say it was true or not. I simply don't know. You never get enough detailed data to really make true judgments on these comparisons. I usually look to who uses or endorses a product as a good indicator. That doesn't always mean it's good though.