its usually the other way round, the problem is not engine or oil. - Both can be satisfied eventually.
e.g. when mercedes benz made their 5g tronic automatic gearbox in 1993 - it was a masterpiece of engineering and had a variable duty torque converter clutch which could apply even in first gear (diesels) - this meant that it was a constant slip type system which would cook ordinary ATF to death. So they worked with shell to develop its fluid which was 3403-M115 spec ATF. Very robust but extremely expensive oil at the time - imagine when regular ATF was 10 dollars a gallon, the benz one was 100 dollars a gallon.
similarly - Porsche, BMW and Benz AMG race engines take a unique blended oil which is shockingly expensive - that oil survives perfect in engines whose turbo turbine side start to glow red hot under full power. Mobil provides the oil for those - but its out of reach of normal customers due to price.
or when mazda drove their LeMans racer to victory - the NA 4 rotor engine was using a weird synthetic oil mostly used as coolant as it was using premix fuel like a 2 stroke. That oil is not available for sale, it was blended by idemitsu lubes - the same co. that blends the super smooth moly overdosed mazda 0W20 engine oil for their new skyactiv engines.
The program you saw was probably marketing propaganda.
There are lots of stories and situations in history - e.g. the shinkansen line used Royal Purple grease in the beginning as it was the only co. that could make such a grease.
another example relating the first post of MB 5g tronic - nowadays you can fill it with multipurpose valvoline ATF or similar product like chrysler ATF+4 as they are also HFM ATF and what mercedes invented/started is now commonplace hence cheaper to get - e.g. toyota ECT with partial lockup system (the one requiring T-IV ATF). Further down we saw low viscosity ATF like Dexron VI (6) and further thinner like ATF WS (Toyota).
point is - economics play a big factor.
