Good memory TallPaul, you must be taking your Ginkgo Biloba.
The short answer. That's from my pre-BITOG days, when many people convinced me that "you need a thicker oil film if your going to run it with the pedal to the metal for extended periods."
Longer answer. Fast forward to today. Since joining BITOG I've studied the science of lubrication (my background is in computer controls of jet and car/truck engines) and concluded that all the people who told me I needed thicker oil, just didn't know any better. After learning about the Stribeck curve, lubrication regimes, additive functionality, etc, etc I started to see the light. Give me some hydrodynamic bearing dimensions, load, RPMs, oil viscosity and I can now calculate the MFT and the predicted temperature increase of the oil through the bearing.
The picture above is from a 1989 Supra. Since I've always have two or three vehicles to drive at one time, they don't accumulate a lot of mileage, especially when on was on extended deployments. Prior to that picture, it saw it's last batch of Syntec 5w50 in 2003 just to clear it out of my oil stash. It is now doing quite nicely with GC in it.
One last point, flash back to the early 1990s and ask yourself how many synthetic oils could you buy off the shelf at discount stores and how many of those did you trust for whatever reasons.
