The Extended Maintenance Intervals

I've been thinking lately of how Porsche has extended the maintenance intervals of the 997 for oil changes to every 2 yrs or 20K miles. Any idea how they have extended the oil change interval over the 996 by 5K miles? http://www.porsche.com/international...anceintervals/ Now I know there have been advances in motor oil and innovation such as Lokasil cylinder liners, which supposedly reduces wear; however, I've been thinking that there's another less obvious reason behind these extended service intervals, and our cars may be suffering for it. Porsche has been selling a lot more vehicles than they ever have, particularly with new models such as the Cayman, Cayenne. This has put a tremendous amount of pressure on dealership service departments which may not have expanded their service facilities to keep up with the demand. At my local (and only) authorized dealer in Vancouver, B.C., a customer often has to schedule an appointment about 2 weeks in advance to get an opening. I believe Lexus had the same problem in the early 90s. They were selling far greater than anticipated volumes and the dealership service depts had a hard time keeping up with routine service of customer vehicles due to insufficient service bays. Fortunately, Lexus' reliability means that there weren't many unscheduled visits. To test my hypothesis, I looked into the service interval for a V6/V8 Toureg vs. Cayenne, which have the same engine. The V6/V8 Toureg recommends an oil change every 10K miles. The Porsche, every 15K or as indicated on the instrument cluster. Hmm. Discuss.

Does VW recommend Mobil One? If not, I'd say that's the reason for more frequent oil change. 997 is every 2 yrs? I thought it's yearly or 20k mi. Longer oil life is usually due to oil changes. I'd still change it every year

Good point. But you'd think that the factory fill would be the same on the Cayenne/Toureg. Yes, 997 is every 2 yrs according to the link I posted.

You can never change oil often enough...of course, you can change it too frequently. Once a year or every 7500 miles will go with me to my grave. And since many of the guys on the forum have generously provided me the know-how to do it myself, it's a no-brainer. Let's look at it this way. You usually shower once a day, but could go on 3 day intervals. It'd probably be okay, but who wants to take the chance with the ladies...ahem, I mean the car. ;-)

Porsche has been selling a lot more vehicles than they ever have, particularly with new models such as the Cayman, Cayenne. This has put a tremendous amount of pressure on dealership service departments which may not have expanded their service facilities to keep up with the demand. So your hypothesis is that Porsche has extended their oil change recommended interval because they have sold so many cars. In the US it's rare to find a Porsche only car dealership. Almost every dealer that sells Porsches allso sells other cars, especially other German cars, and Porsche sales represent a small percentage of cars sold at those dealerships. So even if their Porsche sales doubled, it wouldn't have a major impact on their service capabilities. Unless of course you believe that only Porsche Certifed mechanics are allowed to perform oil changes.