What Is Best

by Garrett McKinnon

Quick, what’s your favorite movie quote? “You lookin’ at me?” “Frankly, my dear…” “Do or do not, there is no try.”

There are literally thousands of famous movie quotes, but one that’s always stuck with me is a line from “Conan the Barbarian,” that 1982 classic that represented Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first big movie role. When asked by a Mongol general “What is best in life,” Conan replies, “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”

Now, maybe it’s because Arnold actually managed to say that with a straight face, but the simple audacity of that line has always seemed poignant. It’s actually one of the few lines that sounded as if it might have originated in one of the classic Conan the Cimmerian short stories by Robert Howard that were published in the 1930s in that bastion of pulp fiction, Weird Tales magazine.

It comes to mind now because Conan wasn’t afraid to pick a fight, and one wonders if there’s just a little bit of Conan floating around General Motors right now.

Don’t get me wrong, I am now and for years have been a big GM fan. My first car? A 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo (loved those big swoopy fenders). My wife’s new car? A 2011 GMC Acadia. My dream car? A ZR1 Corvette.

But it makes one wonder, especially after taxpaying citizens like you and me have sunk billions of dollars into the company — money that, despite the commercials, has yet to be paid back in full, by the way — why GM is so hell-bent on implementing the dexos motor oil specification.

Sure, it looks good on paper. Create a worldwide motor oil specification, one that practically demands a synthetic motor oil (despite GM’s insistence that dexos is “a specification, not a recipe”), and use that very capable product to extend oil change intervals, creating less used motor oil and happier GM customers. I get that, I really do.

What worries me is how the motor oil market has responded. Very few marketers think highly of the dexos specification and its convoluted royalty system, and one motor oil major has gone so far as to publicly declare it will not seek a dexos license, essentially making any product it makes to meet the dexos specification an unlicensed product. Will other marketers follow suit, essentially going toe-to-toe with GM over the issue in a Conan-style bloodbath?

Such a scenario is enough to make one shiver, and here’s why: dexos already represents a major defection from ILSAC, the body of North American and Asian automakers largely responsible for crafting motor oil standards for most of the past two decades. Without GM, any hypothetical GF-6 follow-up to the pending GF-5 specification is already in pretty warm water. All it would take to really turn up the heat on ILSAC would be for another major automaker or two, say Chrysler or Toyota, to decide to set their own standards, essentially blowing up ILSAC and allowing each automaker to choose its own path when it comes to motor oil standards. And if dexos is any indication, we’ve already seen how marketers might react, choosing to make products that meet those standards, but not participate in any OEM-sponsored licensing program.

That could lead us to a new world of totally unlicensed motor oil. Sure, major motor oil marketers would probably stand behind their products, but without a licensing program it’s a safe bet that automakers will be much less likely to warranty their vehicles against motor oil-related problems, something that could be a big headache for the lube industry.

Here’s hoping that GM will realize that what is best for them may not be best for the auto service industry — including GM dealerships — as a whole, and somehow make peace with motor oil marketers upset about dexos licensing. Because the alternative to diplomacy is not a pretty picture.

GARRETT MCKINNON is editor of National Oil & Lube News and absolutely loved both Conan movies as a kid. Questions, comments, concerns (or just plain sympathy)? E-mail him: garrett.mckinnon@noln.net