[DGthe3]

Umm, what do the automakers care about oil changes and gas milage? Those are in the domain of big oil, not detroit.

One thing that people always ignore is that you can never have it all. There are 3 basic laws to engineering
1) If something can go wrong, eventually it will (aka Murphy's Law)
2) Of low cost, reliability, and quality (ie performance, refinement, comfort, etc), pick two!
3) Its not possible to over-estimate the power of complete idiots

What does all that mean? Well if you ever want something that lasts forever and provides amazing performance it will cost a fortune. However, it will eventually break, and that will happen a lot sooner if an idiot gets a hold of it.

For example, to the engine you mentioned, the oil issues require very tight tollerences (expensive) with materials that don't wear away (also expensive) that don't transmit much heat (expensive). Next you want these engines to have three times as much power as most engines on the market today. Guess what, the more power you produce, the more heat you make. And oil doesn't like heat. So you need to develop a way to keep the engine cool while running (expensive). And it needs to be fuel efficient? That will require very precise mechanisms for fuel delivery and near perfect burning of the fuel within the engine. I'm not even sure if its possible to get 35 mpg with a 350 hp car in real driving conditions. Anyway, all of the advanced little bits of technology are things that can break. So you need to make them indestructable (expensive). So unless you are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, its not going to happen. Or you could change the oil and buy a bit more gasoline.

We have came a long way in 40 years but there just isn't that much more that can be done. The internal combustion engine isn't all that efficient, and its over 100 years old. It's potential is nearly maxed out, not quite, but almost. Sure we could make smaller cars with carbon fibre weighing 1500 lbs and get away with having 25 hp engines and get 60 mpg. But I don't want a car like that. I want a 3500 lb 400 hp V8 camaro that gets 25-30 mpg.