Well, I finally got a good look at this letter and had the time to craft some comments and responses to what
Mr. Waterman from
Castrol had to say.
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... we conducted an extensive proprietary testing program that proved that the new hydroisomerized base stock allowed us to blend a synthetic product that was superior to the old PAO formula.
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Superior? In what way? Have they compared the two in head-to-head tests? Oh, that’s right it was ‘proprietary’ which means private and not for public release. This smells fishy. If they have real testing showing their product having specific advantages (for our engines and not merely their corporate profits), why not make that information public? And just what ARE “hydroisomerized base stocks� anyway? Well according to the information on
Chevron’s website (lets call them an uninterested 3rd party for the sake of this argument), they are all heavily processed oil-out-of-the-ground oils even though they refrain from using the terms ‘crude oil’ or ‘petroleum’ in their descriptions. These words probably have very specific definitions within the industry even though lay people would use them to describe all that black gooey stuff that comes out of the ground.
http://www.chevron.com/lubricants/main.htm
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Rather than attempt to compete in the marketplace, Mobil - a major manufacturer of PAO base stock - challenged us before the NAD.
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Actually it was presented to me that
Mobil had sued
Castrol basically over the word ‘synthetic’ ... and the lawsuit went nowhere because there is no standard, accepted definition of the word ‘synthetic’ as applied to motor oils. Every processed product where molecules are rearranged to one degree or another COULD be called ‘synthetic.’ So, the
National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau could not rule against
Castrol for false advertising. Just because it is ‘legal’ doesn’t make it right. We all know THAT.
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The challenge backfired when the NAD, relying on industry standards and the
extensive expert testimony of leading scientists here and in Europe, rejected Mobil's position and completely upheld our position.
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Again, just what IS ‘synthetic?’ The problem here is definitions ... just like the tricks
Slick Willie used to weasel out of trouble.
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As the NAD found, the assumption of both Mobil and Mr. Bedard that there is only one way to formulate synthetic motor oil is plain wrong.
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This is pure BS. They never said that.
Redline uses Polyol Esthers and there are other synthesized, non-petroleum/crude oil lubricants out there that would qualify as ‘synthetic’ easily.
Mr. Waterman is putting silly words in other people’s mouths and he should know better.
Quote:
Mr. Bedard's article includes several significant mistakes:
1. Syntec is made with "petroleum base stock."
Syntec is not made with petroleum base stock. Just as PAO is derived from
complex chemical reactions starting with ethylene gas, Syntec's base stock is synthesized using sophisticated processes and chemical reactions. The molecular structures of the starting compounds are fundamentally altered to produce a fluid with vastly improved properties capable of attaining the highest levels of formulated synthetic lubricant performance.
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OK, he talked about where PAO (
Mobil 1, Valvoline Synpower, etc ..) Comes from but he fails to say what
Castrol Syntec started out as. Tree sap? Cheese Wiz? Toothpaste? The truth is it comes out of the ground just like conventional petroleum oil. Perhaps it’s not TECHNICALLY called ‘petroleum’ once it’s gone through certain processes, but it comes from crude oil just like petroleum does. These arguments are merely silly semantics.
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2. PAO results in a more stable fluid, with low temperature flow, and resistance to boiling off and oxidation. The inference here is that Syntec's base stock does not provide these properties, which it does.
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All companies make these sort of claims and nowhere on
Mobil’s site, sales literature or packaging do they disparage any
Castrol product.
Mr. Waterman can ‘infer’ all the bad things he wants but he’ll get precious little sympathy from me.
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Syntec's performance in these areas is unsurpassed.
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Really? Let me see the test results. If
Castrol’s stuff is truly better, I’ll switch in a couple weeks ... the next time I change my oil & filter. If this new way of making lubricants was truly better for our engines,
Castrol would have spent millions in advertising pointing this out to consumers. Their lack of evidence says a lot about their product.
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It meets the toughest industry standards.
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Yes, and so does all the no-name brand oil that says “SJ� on the label. As we all know, this doesn’t mean squat. The only ‘high-performance’ standard that
Syntec meets that regular, conventional doesn’t is the
GM 4718M Corvette standard and I don’t know the specifics of that at all. It may be something minor that allows
Syntec to slip through while excluding other high-performance petroleum-type oils ... like the fact that they claim to be a ‘synthetic’ while the others do not.
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3. Syntec's base stock costs half as much as Mobil 1's.
Mr. Bedard quotes a statement from Lubricants World that does not pertain to the base stock Castrol buys for Syntec. In truth, Mr. Bedard has absolutely no information about the production costs of our product ...
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Notice he doesn’t deny the charge that
Castrol’s newer formulation is cheaper for them to produce and they’re now making a fortune off the stuff?
Patrick Bedard’s primary point is that
Castrol switched over because the newer formulation is cheaper to produce ... and nothing
Mr. Waterman has said has dissuaded me from that central supposition.
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Syntec is engineered to surpass the minimum performance levels specified by U.S. automakers for the mass market.
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See above, nearly ALL oils sold today meet these ‘minimum performance levels.’ Big deal.
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We trust that his article will not mislead you and other knowledgeable consumers.
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Yeah, well blowin’ smoke up our butts doesn’t change the fact that you guys are selling highly refined (“hydroisomerized base stock�) crude oil and telling us it is essentially the same as specialized PAO and other AUTHENTIC synthetic formulas. If you want a high quality, petroleum-type hydroisomerized oil, do yourself a favor and get
Valvoline Max-Life motor oil which can be bought for $2 per quart as opposed to the $4+ that
Castrol charges for its
Syntec.
I’m a ‘knowledgeable consumer’ and all I saw in Mr. Waterman’s letter is a bunch of lawyer-speak. You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but not this boy ... not today!
Thanks
Mr. Waterman, but I’m sticking with PAO-type synthetics like
Mobil 1, Valvoline Synpower and others (maybe even
Quaker State?). Plus, this summer I’m gonna try
Redline which is probably the best stuff on the planet ... then all this other arguing will be moot.
---
Bror Jace
PS - If I can find an e-mail address for
Patrick Bedard, I’m gonna fire this letter off to him and hopefully get some sort of response.
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