Thanks for the responses, guys, I’ve tried to make my points about the product and NOT about people on this board. So far people have been mostly civil. Let’s be sure to keep it that way.
pscholte, you are correct in that I can’t be sure that Chevron, Pennzoil or some other company wouldn’t have switched to Group III … but you can’t be sure they
would have. However, once one company did it … and had it held up in the courts, the economic pressure
But, somebody had to be the first to “cheat” or “play dirty.” Oh, and I stand by my word “sleazy” and it was Castrol who threw that first low-blow. Patrick Bedard of
Car & Driver wrote his landmark article (in 2000?) about this and he didn’t use that particular word … but he might as well have.
As for an anti-Castrol bias. Yes, I suppose I have one … but it’s in response to this Group III synthetic business and not some silly superstition, color of the bottle, hated sponsored driver from I also have an anti-Valvoline bias, anti-Quaker State bias, anti-Royal Purple bias, an anti-Mobil bias, an anti-Amsoil bias, an anti-PTFE bias and probably a few others I can’t put my finger on at the momemnt. Each for different reasons and each with varying intensity. In all cases I give pretty specific reasons why I think the way I do … and I try to be fair in each case.
GROUCHO, Oil companies are allowed to call Group III “synthetic” because of a bad civil trial where the “star witness,” the API, refused to come up with a functional definition of an industry term. Simply put, they punted and deemed “Synthetic” to be whatever the advertiser says it is. They claimed it is not a technical definition but rather a marketing one … which is simply ridiculous. Ask the majority of people here with a formal chemical background. It’s
not just me with this gripe.
As for leaving it up to Mobil to talk about the technical terms of the oil and teach people why theirs is superior, that’s great in theory but in practice it’s very difficult. I have a degree in marketing and a highly technical sell is very difficult to accomplish with a mass-market product and a distracted public which usually doesn’t have time or patience to listen and understand what’s going on. If I were an industry wholesaler selling base stocks to other (technically educated) industry people, that would be very different.
“Castrol is using a simple pricing theory and getting a premium price for a lower cost product. It's done everyday. “
Not really because it’s not the same product. Castrol’s is produced differently and the end result is not the same as what everyone knew synthetic to be (PAO, ester, etc …). I’m trying to come up with an analogy like wine, cheese or some other processed product where there is a classic-but-expensive way to produce it as well as a modern short-cut which makes a similar almost-as-good product. But in those cases, subjective factors such as taste and smell come into play and it’s just not the same situation. In the end Group III mineral base stock and PAO is not the same. People think they are paying for something significantly different than mineral oil (and paying around triple as much) but what they are getting is mineral oil. Highly processed, to be sure, but it’s simply not worth (using wholesale prices) what they are asking for it at the retail level. For many of us, it’s low-intensity fraud.
Primus, as
Patman pointed out, Castrol began using this stuff in late 1997 or early 1998. Do you have dates for the examples you cited above? Sounds like oils available primarily (solely?) available in Europe. I throw myself on my knees and plead complete and utter ignorance of European brands, formulas, etc …
HOWEVER, Castrol claimed that Mobil had tried to pass off Group III as synthetic in Europe on at least one occasion. I never said the Mobil folks wore purely white hats.
“If somebody decides to make a bet comparing performance of Castrol Syntec 5W-50 and Castrol Formula SLX 0W-30, I'm ready to place 3:1 for 5W-50.”
To be fair, weights in any comparison tests should be the same … unless you are testing different weights against each other and in that case, brand/formulation type should be the same. Always try to eliminate or at least minimize variable in testing. Anyway, I’d take Mobil 1 15W50 over either … and I’m not really that partial to Mobil.
Dubb, I’ll agree with you that an oil’s performance is more than just the base oil … or even the sum of the rest of the ingredients. Red Line’s inconsistent UOAs and Schaeffer Oil’s impressive performance has taught us that, if nothing else.
However, the Castrol issue really comes down to what they’ve done with their base oils. To talk about total oil performance, additives, etc … clouds the issue. Group III Castrol Syntec might be a good-performing oil (probably is decent if not very good) but the issue among us has always been: Is it “synthetic” like they advertise? For the purists (not zealots, merely sticklers for important details) among us, the answer is a definite “no.”
If Castrol came out with a new oil in 1998 and claimed that because of a new, high-tech process they’ve created a mineral oil which equals synthetic’s performance (even if it actually comes up a few percentage points short in several areas) at a lower cost (Say, $3 – 3.50 per quart retail), then this wouldn’t be an issue. The problem is that most common automotive lubricating oils have been classified into “conventional” (or mineral, dead dino juice, etc …) and synthetic.
The average buyer believes there is a distinct, technical difference. But Castrol changed all that and is selling high quality oil out of the ground as “synthetic” at double the price. They tried to quietly slip one by us and make a boatload of money selling a product which is not what most people think it is. And, to a large extent they’ve succeeded. There’s not a lot many of us can do about that … but we can at least criticize them for what they’ve done.
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Bror Jace
