Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Well, with all due respect, Whitewolf ....
While I can surely see the OEM being the most authoritative and qualified to specify their ATF ...it invites the fully intended co-effects.
Bear with me here. If you give a dog a bone every time he rolls over ..he's going to roll over every time he wants a bone.
That is, if licensing new fluids is a integrated part of the revenue stream ..the by gosh darn ..there's going to be a pretty good incentive to come up with new ones every so often just for the $$$ of it. It won't necessarily have to produce any real value ...or it may. I do understand that no R&D team is going to hand in their ID badges and say "Okay, we're done. Lay us off."
If you see what I mean.
I understand why your opinion may be such, but I'm afraid I don't agree!
I think you're underestimating the magnitude of the resources (monetary and otherwise) required in order to develop a new fluid, including the development of the specification and the tests necessary in order to ensure that qualified fluids comply with the increasingly stringent quality requirements. Therefore, the idea (particularly in the current economic climate) that an OEM would simply change specs for a comparatively minor monetary gain is not realistic.