Originally Posted By: Rick in PA
I remember that issue. I also worked at a Mobil station during that time.
Reading the article, you can see how they hyped that synthetic oil could go 100,000 miles. A lot of folks bought into that. They thought you could change to synthetic and you'd never have to change your oil again... ever. That didn't work out.
The other issue that arose was oil consumption. Mobil 1 was 5W-20, at the time 10W-40 was the "standard" oil weight. The 5W-20 improved efficiency a little, as highlighted in the article and this was not too long after the oil embargo of '73. Everybody was looking for increased MPG. However, it also increased oil consumption. This was particularly a problem where someone had switched to Mobil 1 in a bit of a clunker that already had a little oil leak. All of a sudden, the little oil leak became substantial. The synthetics were 4-5x the cost of conventional oil and having a car that guzzled that stuff hurt.
So while the introduction of synthetic motor oil took off with a burst, by the late '70s it had mostly fizzled. People became disenchanted with it and most folks switched back to conventional motor oil.
It was ahead of its time.
Not me.