If Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, etc. are all telling us what to do and what not to do then (with all due respect), how is it that we keep wanting to listen to shade tree mechanics rather than the world's finest automotive engineers?

Of course, Americans bought an awful lot of Ford Explorers and followed the advice of that company when they said to under inflate their crappy tires by 9 pounds so it wouldn't roll over.

Then there is Honda who should know better telling us to use 5W-20 oil in their new cars so that it'll help them with their CAFE averages. Ford does it too but that's the kind of thing you'd expect from Ford.

Then there are Lexus dealers offering 30 weight Mobil 1 which is no longer a true synthetic and banned by Mercedes-Benz.

Frankly, it's hard to know what to believe anymore. However, I've got my wife trained to listen to only what I tell her