No Steve said this: For filters, the best brand names to buy on are Wix or Purolator. Filters from a dealer and labelled with a car-maker's parts division are truly of unknown origin in many cases.
And my response would be unless you have all of the information about the performance of a group of filters (or any automotive component) then you do not know whether one filter with a brand name on it willl perform any better or worse than a filter with a car manufacturers brand name on the outside.
This discussion heads in the same direction every time it comes up. Some of us are in love with a particular brand and when pressed to say why the response is along the line of "It's a better filter" or "I've always used brand XXX and it has never let me down", but there is no evidence provided to support such a statement. It's little more than an anecdote trading exercise.
I could not imagine why anyone would want to get into vetting the sources for components used on a car. Neither you nor steve has access to information to show that the filters provided by GM, Volvo, Mercedes, etc., is any better or worse than an over the shelf unit. Unless of course you can come up with independent laboratory tests of the performance of those filters that shows something to the contrary. That website fallls way short of providing such information.
It is little more than a long anecdote about someone who cut a bunch of filters apart with NO information about how the filters perform in the real world.