Where to begin?
Pretty much anything I type will sound like a sales pitch, so I'll go light.
How about, Amsoil isn't that great, but I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance!?
Maybe not.
I want to talk about Amsoil and not degrade into the continual "stupidity of specsmanship" and "I am a warranty lawyer". If you want to read this crap, search around, it's gone stale.
Seriously - I like Amsoil as a company more than ever the 6 months or so. In fact it looks like I will like Amsoil even more when hard headed Al either gives over the reins to Al Jr. or, well, er, dies. I mean he did call Mobil 1 "panther pi$$". But worse his stubbornness comes off as ignorance more often than not. The moly statements, the refusal to do things about real weaknesses. I must credit Al with making a GREAT company with excellent growth and sales. The problem as a small company - right when they can and should put the huge flexibility advantage to work - the roots go down and Al says; "Nope - no need to change" I am, of course, referring to the demand for better oils and the competition coming up very fast. I mean they don't need an oil designed just for sludge engines, but many engines are much more demanding, API has driven the previously borderline oils up to nearly competitive status.
Bottom line - Amsoil set the pace for extended OCI's - better or worse.
On paper, is Amsoil better? Yes vs some oils. No vs some oils. But as we know the real world is not paper. Is this the way to compare two oils? Lots of people hold Mo and POE over all else - nothing wrong with those things - but often they have not really shown they live up to the high dollar paid expectation. We've all turned into oil formulation chemists - shopping ingredients to try to brew the best oil on paper. Tricky at best to pick an oil on paper only.
Redline UOA's have not been stellar, nor have Amsoil's. Can you use this to compare oils? I say carefully at best. The average BiTOG desk jockey oil analyst does a urine poor job at reading between the lines, let alone what is presented front and center. I also think their are way too many changeable attributes when someone drives 10K-20K miles, to compare two oils in two totally different climates, let alone two different car manufacturers and two different engines. I really don't think you can look at 10, 20 or 30 UOA's - sorta squint fuzzily and say that you know a lot about an oil. It's an easy trap to fall into and I do it with the best of them. Carefully use UOA's to compare oil - most of what is taken as fact is really very fuzzy.
Let's talk some positives:
I really like the fact that the basestocks for the top 3 have been altered to not only lower the initial viscosity - but to cut back on the thinning with a more "solvent" base. (no there is no solvent added to ASL, ATM, S2K) I am excited and want to see how this oil does in the viscosity department.
New products this last year - wow Al Jr - keep them coming.
I love the new 5W-40. Not pushed as a super long OCI oil - it seems to do better than it's 3 sisters in cars that like a 40.
The stinking amazing XL series. Yes, group III. Yes expensive. But wow so far, so good. I would not hesitate to put this in my new car.
The new gear oils are doing great.
I also can't wait until the filter hype thing dies down - glad it's over for now. It seems like it takes too much focus away from the core oils. But when it does die down - then back to motor oil.
Amsoil is not just repackaged M1. Sure some of the raw base PAO's come from EM. But Amsoil buys base oils elsewhere as well and has their own formulated additive packages. M1 makes some competitive products, some are more expensive than Amsoil, too.