Originally Posted By: threeputtpar
I eagerly await dnewton3's response to this blanket statement.
I'm a conventional fan, too, but this application is a tiny bit different. When I had the old Audi with similar viscosity recommendations, I tried two strategies (note that I did not do a lot of short tripping). The first was I'd run a lighter conventional in the winter and a 15w-40 in the summer. That was fine, except it consumed the lighter oil fairly rapidly in the winter. The other strategy was a synthetic 0w-40 or 5w-40 for a year round fill. That saved me the grief of seasonal oil changes and the consumption was minimized.
If I put few miles on, the synthetic was more cost effective. Seasonal oil changes can get expensive if few miles are accrued.