Just curious about the (UK) legal definition of a "synthetic motor oil". The text quoted below comes from a posting to a car forum that I frequent and the chap who wrote it is a UK based retailer of consumables including premium oils. The suggestion from this text and the rest of the post (not shown) is that many so called synthetic motor oils that are found in the shops are, in fact, mineral based (although of course, this guy supplies the real McCoy). Surely US rulings as to what constitututes a synthetic motor oil would have no bearing on UK law?
"Now, you may ask, why are these special mineral oils calledsynthetic? Well, it was all sorted in a legal battle that took place in the USA about ten years ago. Sound reasons (including evidence from a Nobel Prize winning chemist) were disregarded and the final ruling was that certain mineral bases that had undergone extra chemical treatments could be calledsynthetic. Needless to say, the marketing executives wet their knickers with pure delight! They realised that this meant, and still does, that the critical buzz-word synthetic could be printed on a can of cheap oil provided that the contents included a few percent of hydrocracked mineral oil, at a cost of quite literally a few pence."
Cheers, Jim.