[cdmulders]

I just had my first oil change performed two days ago (by my local BMW dealer) with approx 12K kms (7500 miles) on the odometer. As an aside, it cost $135 before taxes. I've been tracking through this site many, many opinions on when the best time to change your oil might be, and I concluded that the best answer really boiled down to something like 'at whatever time will help you stop worrying'. Nothing more scientific than that. As mentioned above, you could stimulate the advance of grey hair (to late for me) by worrying about it too much. I really enjoyed the technical analyses such as those by m6pwr, and compared this against a very knowledgeable mechanic friend of mine (with first-hand experience on many, many engines taken apart over the years) who was aghast that someone would not change their oil within the first 5000 kms of new car ownership. I concluded that I'd be happy by halving the recommended change interval from approx 24K kms to just 12K kms. My next oil change will be compliments of BMW, at 24K kms or 1 year, whichever comes first.