Americans average over 14.2k miles a year which is higher than I expected but I assume that’s due to long commutes.

There’s no such thing as too many miles. It’s all about driving conditions. City driving, with its constant start-stop cycles is far harder on a car than someone doing long cross country trips on the highway. Of course, maintenance and overall age are also important considerations. Some components degrade even if the car is sitting in a garage.

Independent bodies have been testing thin oils for decades and there’s no evidence of excessive wear compared to heavier oils. Chemical composition and age of the oil are the actual factors you need to worry about.

From a practical perspective 0W-20 has been common in cars for well over a decade and 0W-16 was not too far behind. Given that owners are notoriously poor with maintenance, if these oils were causing excessive wear and actual damage we would have heard about it a long time ago. There are 0W-16 Civics and Corollas out there with hundreds of thousands of miles on them.

Of course there are specialized use cases where it might make sense to swap out your oil for something thicker. Track use is one application that comes to mind. However, they’re doing it for thermal management during extended WOT conditions and not due to viscosity.

Of course, the cargo cult idiots always believe that it’s a 1-to-1 analog; if something works on a track car then doing the same on a road car means it will run forever. These people ignore the fact that race cars require constant maintenance and frequent oil changes. Racing is about stable performance over the course of an event, not long term reliability. They’re not worried about potential issues from running thicker oils because they have a specific need that justifies the compromise.

I generally like the update and think it’s an improvement on the last gen. I also appreciate when there’s a visual connection to the rest of the lineup.

That said, I do have a few criticisms. Like the new Accord, the Camry is a mid-cycle refresh and not a new platform, but Honda did a much better job of hiding that fact. As incredibly bland as it is, the Accord is more cohesive. The Camry is more incongruous. It’s a mix of the Prius and Crown up front, current gen Camry down the sides and pure Lexus at the rear.

But then, Toyota’s nothing if not pragmatic and have always leaned hard into the front fascia doing the work of distinguishing variants across the globe. You could argue that the current gen XSE front end also feels grafted on. So I guess we’ll see how this design feels in person.