Someone said: "thats why its recommended to start a new car on it and keep it there, that way the hope is your engine stays clean, older engines its useless to do most of the time "

Truth is, it's NOT recomended to start a new car on it. It's recomended to drive at LEAST 1000-1500 miles on "dino oil" first as the rings won't seat properly otherwise.

As for older cars, there no reason not to use synthetics. The old wives tale about them leaking is only partly true. It's not so much that they "will" leak as it is that IF they will, they will with Synthetics. It's simple physics really. It's thinner so if the gaskets are questionable, it's going to leak.

Is synthetic worth it? Depends.

My own opinion is unless it's a turbo/supercharger or factory fill. No. But that's beacuse I change my oil every 4800km/3000 miles so on a "normal" engine, synthetic is just money down the drain.

On a family car/daily driver, it's a complete waste of money.

I used to take it pretty seriously with oil changes on older cars.

But now VW, etc. and even Porsche talk about oil changes every 30k kilometres – and they can't know how many short runs will be involved. Seems like they are pretty confident that their engines will hold almost come what may.

As I've never had any problems, i don't even follow the "next oil change in x months or x thousand miles, whichever is first" I wait till the miles are accumulated if it isn't being used so much.

Just had the oil changed – along with all other fluids – on my Durango at 97k kilometres. The last was about 3ok kilometres and 2 years ago. The 4.7 V8 magnum uses no oil, the oil stays clean. Doesn't use any water either. Amazing bit of kit. I'm pretty sure that oil changes more often would not bring me anything.

Personally, I don't trust the car companies with their sudden longer oil change intervals. I think it coincides too much with being convenient for THEM with all the new legislation about disposing of fluids etc and the fact they figure most people only lease their cars nowadays anyways and the greenieweenie push to get people to be 'consumers' and buy new cars constantly.