I did get a kick out of Popular Mechanic's discussion of VII's. They were saying that the typical polymethacrylate, polyacrylate, and polyolefin VII's of the day were too prone to shearing, and would break down within 1500 miles of driving. Shell's big improvement was development of a more shear-stable VII composed of polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Sounds like discussion that comes up on BITOG regularly, doesn't it?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.