6 motor oil brands owned by Shell – Jalopnik

Shell Oil is now part of a holding company called Royal Dutch Shell plc and is the fifth largest oil company in the world by market capitalization. Investopedia. But it came from much more humble beginnings. The starting point was in 1833, when London businessman Marcus Samuel decided to jump on the then current trend in interior decoration and started importing seashells. His sons would expand into the oil sector in the 1880s and soon have their own fleet of seagoing oil tankers. They then formed the Royal Dutch Company for the Exploitation of Petroleum Resources in the Dutch East Indies around 1890.

A lot of people would say the focus was on that sixth word, and that’s still true. For example, Shell may have recently sold its interests in the Niger Delta, but only after doing its part to create “one of the most heavily polluted places on earth, where decades of oil extraction have caused devastating environmental and human health consequences,” as University of Durham put it. And many believe that selling Shell was just a way to get away with it. Another example comes from the way in which Shell allegedly lied about investments in green energy.

Anyway, the name Shell was first used as a kerosene brand by the Samuel brothers, and the Shell Transport and Trading Co. began operations in 1897. In addition to exploitation and extraction, Shell has also grown bigger over the years by expanding its product line – again by occasionally profiting from the efforts of others. It eventually became the owner of six motor oil brands, including not only Shell Rotella, Shell Advance, Shell Helix and Shell Rimula, but also former rivals such as Pennzoil and Quaker State.

The auto and oil industries grew virtually hand in hand in the early days of the twentieth century and followed the same pattern of market consolidation. That is, both started with many small companies and ended with only a few large companies. The story of Pennzoil is a good example of this – even before it was bought by Shell in 2002.

It started in Pennsylvania, of course, with the founding of the Penn Refining Company in 1886 by Henry Suhr, Samuel Justus, and Louis Walz. Next came Penn-American in 1917, although the two companies behind that name, Penn Refining and the Germania Refining Company, had already joined forces three years earlier. The name Pennzoil came into the picture in 1924 as a result of yet another merger, this time between Penn American and the Oil City Oil and Grease Company. Pennzoil was in turn swallowed up by a former rival in 1925, when the South Penn Oil Company, originally owned by Standard Oil, acquired a controlling interest in the company. How Standard Oil built its toxic monopoly is a story for another day.

Pennzoil – as an oil company – was reborn in 1963 as a result of, you guessed it, another combination of companies. Because South Penn was involved in this merger, stakeholders capitalized on the popular name of that company’s motor oil, Pennzoil, for their newest conglomerate. Pennzoil would survive another four decades of inter-oil industry dealings – supported by its namesake motor oil and a growing range of related products – before becoming a subsidiary of Shell.

Okay, one big merger that we left out of our little history of Pennzoil that’s also relevant here since we’re talking about the 1998 partnership between Pennzoil and Quaker State Motor Oil. However, Quaker State had a slightly less confusing path to getting to that point than Pennzoil. It was originally called Phinny’s Quaker State Medium Oil and was named in 1914 after its founders, Thomas and Hopewell Phinny. The name was shortened to Quaker State in 1921, and although it was associated with another Phinny venture – a partnership in the Eastern Refining Company – the latter concern would become the Quaker State Oil Refining Corporation in the early 1940s.

Quaker State and Pennzoil would spend the next fifty years as rivals, not only in the retail stores as oil brands, but also on the track, and especially in NASCAR. Quaker State set the pace here and as early as 1986 became the primary sponsor of King Racing – strangely enough owned by NHRA champion Kenny Bernstein. It had a long and successful run supporting Hendricks Motorsports and today remains the title sponsor of the Quaker State 400. Pennzoil is perhaps best known in NASCAR circles for its continued association with Penske Racing, which made the wrong kind of NASCAR news in 2025 for completing a trifecta of cheating incidents.

Although a merger brought the rivals together, it also meant the breakup of part of Pennzoil. The new company would take Pennzoil’s exploration and extraction business out of its retail product and combine it with the entire Quaker State operation – before, as mentioned, the joint company would be bought by Shell.

Pennzoil and Quaker State both have long, established histories in the United States, but not in Europe and other international markets where Shell sells oil. With that in mind, these two names are still the primary Shell brands for typical passenger cars in the US – each, to be clear, distinguished by its own unique blend of additives – while Shell Helix plays that role in most of the rest of the world.

Finally getting started with some products: Helix sells traditional motor oil, semi-synthetic motor oil, fully synthetic motor oil and a premium synthetic range made with what Shell calls its PurePlus technology – a proprietary name for gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology. This essentially means that the starting point for products like Shell Helix Ultra is natural gas, which burns cleaner, with fewer impurities, than traditional motor oil or ‘regular’ fully synthetic oil. Oh, and don’t forget that there are good reasons to switch to synthetic motor oil, whether it comes from GTL or not. Also on the shelves of international auto parts stores is Helix engine oil specifically tailored for hybrid vehicles, enhanced performance and long life applications.

That’s not the end of the line either. Helix is ​​also an international Shell brand for diesel engine oil and mineral oil – obviously not the kind we were looking at when comparing mineral oil to DOT brake fluid. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Shell Helix diesel engine oil is intended for retail passenger cars. Shell sells two other brands for commercially oriented trucks.

Well, the first sounds like some kind of paste mixed with a hazelnut paste, and the second seems to be home to some Star Trek aliens, but Rotella and Rimula are in fact Shell’s two engine oil brands for HD diesel vehicles. The main difference? Shell follows the same tactics as with Pennzoil/Quaker State and Helix, and therefore has Rotella in the US and Canada, and Rimula elsewhere. Rimula also sells specific diesel engine oils for light and heavy duty applications, with Rotella focusing mainly on HD trucks.

Shell also has name brand technology for its diesel engine oils, with its Dynamic Protection Plus products praised for their ability to adapt to engine conditions and deliver optimal lubrication performance in a variety of situations. Again, it is not a technology unique to Shell, but it is a good benchmark for the state of the industry.

Moreover, it is worth pointing out that Shell and its rivals are already preparing for a big next step in this area. Despite recent news that the Trump EPA will begin to ignore health benefits when considering how – or whether – to protect the environment, the same group is still on track to implement regulations to reduce diesel emissions by 2027. And that means the American Petroleum Institute (API) will still roll out a new motor oil standard – PC-12 – to support these rules. Shell naturally claims to be working hard to prepare for the new regulations and to do everything it can for a cleaner environment. It is important to note that they have been concerned about becoming cleaner for decades; they just seem to have made a conscious decision not to do anything about it.

It turns out that motorcycles today, even when comparing four-stroke engines, get the best performance from oil that is formulated differently than automotive oil – and that’s because the oil has a bigger role to play in motorcycles. Motor oil for four-wheel vehicles generally only lubricates the engine, while for many motorcycles the same oil must keep the clutch and transmission running smoothly – while the engine itself runs hotter and faster than that of a typical car engine. As a result, engine oil and additives must be developed to handle these more extreme conditions.

That’s where Shell Advance comes into play, with specific oils for two-stroke motorcycle engines, four-stroke mills, four-stroke scooter engines and high-performance track machines ranging from two-stroke karts to four-stroke racing bikes. It’s true that Shell gets some technical assistance for its Advance product, but the oil company’s partner is a proven winner.

The technical partnership between Shell and Ducati has been in place since 1999, with the former supplying ‘bespoke’ racing fuel and oil to Ducati Corse, the latter’s championship-winning motorsport division, and doing the same for the company’s racing bikes: they are all filled with Shell Advance oil and Shell V-Power petrol before reaching the customer.

For what it’s worth, Shell is also the only officially recommended supplier for BMW Motorrad motorcycles, albeit with BMW brand Advantec oil. And don’t worry, it looks like the 2027 BMW F 450GS will continue that tradition.