The whole tone of this thread is further enforcing the statement I made in my original post - "people are intensely loyal to their choice of oils".

What we all need to remember is first - as the old saying goes "your results may vary". Some people swear by the mileage they get from Shell gasoline, other's prefer Chevron, still others Exxon. It is true that some cars seem to "prefer" one brand of gasoline over another.

Plenty of people have opened up high-mileage engines running "brand X" oils, and have seen little or no wear. For each of those stories, I'm sure there's a "googleable" thread out there about the person that changed their oil religiously at the proper interval and suffered massive mechanical failure at comparatively low mileage, using the same "brand X" oil.

There are some situations in life where it is OK to say "sorry, friend, you're wrong" - when you hear about someone putting diesel in their gasoline engine and "everything works even better - you should try it!!!". There are other situations where opinions are the order of the day, and each persons opinion should be offered in kindness and accepted in friendship.

As for the Super-Tech oils - this was in 2003/2004 when I'm sure that the stuff in the bottles was Pennzoil/QS oils. Walmart is free to negotiate with whomever they choose to get the best deal for the oil that goes in their bottles - something they apparently have done.

Part of my exposure while at SOPUS (the correct name for the conglomerate that owns Pennzoil/Quaker State/Havoline....) let me to see how much effort is expended defending the product against lawsuits from individuals who swear that the failure in their engine was caused by the oil. There's a lot of science (and I'll bet a fair amount of magic) that goes into figuring out what the true cause of a lubrication-related engine failure.

A lot of what will determine a buyer's experience with an oil is related to how the car is driven. There are numerous posts from MB owners that experience condensation-related goop at the cap on modern MB cars that are only driven short distances in cold weather. You can take two identical engines in two identical cars in the same town, and with the same oil over the same miles get a completely different result - all from the difference in the way the cars are driven.