My first car was a 1974 Dodge Colt GT that I bought from the original owner (my big sister) in 1977 with roughly 30,000 miles on it. When I finally gave it to my (eventual) brother-in-law it had almost 200,000 miles on it. I changed the oil every 3,000 miles (give or take a couple hundred) with Castrol GTX 20W50. The thing ran like a top, didn't smoke and rarely needed more than 1/2 a quart of oil between changes. I also ran nothing but Fram filters (oh the horror!!!).

My 1984 BMW 318i also was running strong and not burning oil at 200,000 miles and it routinely got either Pennzoil 10W40 or Castrol 10W40. Again, Fram filters.

To this day I've never understood what I could possibly have gained from using an expensive "boutique" oil in those cars, or a filter that wasn't prone to failure as the Interwebs would have us all believe. And 400,000 combined miles of 3,000 drain & filter change intervals is a lot of Fram filters!

My Crossfire will continue to get Mobil 1 in the recommended weight. In all honesty, my reasoning echos that of Photoman's - if the folks who designed and built the engine recommend a certain oil and filter then I'm good with that.