i'm wondering if any of you follow the "severe maintenance schedule" laid out in the warranty/maintenance handbook that came with the manual. To me, regular is fine...but i do live in Toronto and the book recommended the "severe schedule" for Canadians.

the severe schedule looks like it costs almost double what regular costs

i the only thing i fall under is driving on salted roads...but that's only 5 months out of the year. i don't idle in heavy traffic or use my breaks excessively.

 

I do severe simply because I drive the car pretty hard It doesn't really cost that much more. It's mainly the oil changes, which I feel better about having fresh oil in anyway. When I did oil analysis on Mobil1 5W-30, it had sheared to nearly a 20-weight oil in about 3k miles anyway. I personally wouldn't want to drive it much longer in that state, and I also am sticking with Mobil1 just to avoid any warranty hassles in case something comes up (even though I know they have no right to force us to use Mobil1, but it's one less thing they can potentially try to harass me about).

 

If you don't thrash your car, I'd follow the regular maintenance interval. If you can, time the oil changes with the change from warmer to colder (and vice versa) seasons in case you need to run a different viscosity for the climate.

I typically do my oil service anywhere from 3500-4500 miles. For the other stuff, I follow the recommended interval.