The Slippery Slope

You might have noticed a curious thing at your local motoring emporium. Petrol, that highly volatile, heavily taxed, explosively flammable liquid we use by the gallon, costs less per litre than engine oil – a sticky little potion you use once every 10,000 miles and which lives its quiet life in the sump. How the hell does that make sense?

Let’s break it down, shall we?

Fuel, bless it, is dragged out of the ground, boiled into submission, and then dumped into your tank for around £1.50 a litre – roughly 70p of which is stolen by the Treasury for daring to use your car. That’s right – most of what you pay is for the privilege of moving, not the product itself. Meanwhile, engine oil is basically liquid gold, lovingly hand-crafted by a team of elves in a Swiss lab, then squirted into a 5-litre plastic jug that looks suspiciously like a repurposed milk bottle. Price? Anywhere from £10 to £25 a litre. Because apparently, your camshaft needs coddling.

Why? Well, the oil manufacturers will tell you it's the additives – magical friction modifiers, detergent fairy dust, anti-wear this and high-temperature that. It’s chemistry, old boy. Science. But don’t ask what these additives actually cost to make – that’s proprietary, you understand. Like Coca-Cola, but oilier.

Then there’s packaging. While petrol arrives via an underground pipe and is dispensed by a robot that also sells pasties, oil arrives in a garish plastic bottle adorned with promises of performance, protection, and peace of mind. It’s the aftershave of the automotive world – overpriced, overmarketed, and about as essential in quantity as a dab behind the ears.

And let’s not forget the “regulatory testing.” Engine oil, you see, must pass a battery of torturous lab tests to prove it won’t turn your pistons into soup. Petrol, by contrast, only has to not explode too early – a much lower bar. So oil gets pampered in a lab, while petrol is barely supervised in a refinery.

Of course, there’s the final insult – the markup. Since you only buy oil once in a blue moon, the margins are stratospheric. Retailers know you’ve no idea what you’re buying, but you'll shell out for that magic "fully synthetic" label because it sounds futuristic. And because deep down, you’re terrified of knackered valve seals and a finger-wagging mechanic.

So there you have it. A litre of oil costs more than a litre of unleaded, not because it’s better – but because it's branded, bottled, and bullshitted to within an inch of its life.

Meanwhile, we nod, pay up, and pretend our engines can tell the difference between "ProTech Ultra Platinum" and a pint of duck fat.