Photo caption: David Ezersky, an assistant store manager of Valvoline Instant Oil Change in St. Louis, installs a quart of TM8ª Engine Treatment in a customer's car.
(NUI) - Adding a quality engine treatment to your car's oil system can help prevent summer's roar from destroying your engine's purr.
As new-car sticker shock prompts car owners to keep their vehicles longer, consumer demand is growing for any legitimate edge to extend engine life and keep cars moving down the road.
"Consumers have bought into the engine treatment market in general, and some of that has to do with advances in the industry," said Gary Galick, the Valvoline Instant Oil Change area manager for Syracuse, N.Y. "People are keeping their cars a lot longer. The average age of cars is approaching 10 years. People are looking for every avenue to extend the engine life."
Stop-and-go driving is hardest on a car's engine and it gets tougher during summer heat. "There's nothing as important as the engine in the life expectancy of a car," said Michael Thompson, product manager with The Valvoline Company. "Engine treatments are now recognized as a good way to help protect an engine in difficult driving conditions."
That recognition wasn't always the case. In fact, Valvoline, which brought its own test-proven TM8ª Engine Treatment to market last summer, once questioned in service bulletins the benefits of engine treatments added to quality motor oil.
But through research, development and testing, Valvoline says it has been able to show the benefits of TM8 Engine Treatment and has thus become the first oil company to develop its own engine treatment.
"Our customers have requested an engine treatment for a long time, but we weren't convinced that they helped engines perform better," Thompson said. "We've found scientific evidence in laboratory experiments and in engine tests that TM8 provided significant additional protection."
TM8 Engine Treatment is a blend of eight high-tech additives, including DuPont's Teflon, with synthetic motor oil as a carrier. Use of the treatment results in less wear, less friction and better motor oil performance, most notably better high-temperature protection and reduced deposit formation.
Engine treatments represent a growing product category. Valvoline has sold more than 230,000 quarts of TM8 Engine Treatment in the first eight months it's been on the market and expects to sell more than a half-million quarts in the current fiscal year that ends in September.
"It's nice to be able to meet pent-up demand while offering a legitimate test-proven product that we stand behind," Thompson said.
