[hwillis]

oh my yes. The oil that comes in the engine of a vehicle is a good proxy for how carefully it was built. It collects everything that wasn't cleaned off, and every burr and bad surface creates more gunk during the factory run-in. Even if the first oil is replaced -as it should be, if its dirty- there's still left over gunk that will end up in later oil.

FortNine had the oil of a bunch of motorcycle brands analyzed. Aprilla and Ducati are two of the most expensive motorcycle brands- they make extreme performance luxury machines. They don't even make entry or mid-level bikes. They're both intensely race-focused. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GAUo8eUXeU

Spoiler: Aprilla did 20x worse than the next-best, Ducati did 50x worse. They were an order of magnitude worse in every size of particle inclusion. Harley Davidson has possibly the worst reputation of any non-chinese motorcycle manufacturer and the best Ducati or Aprilla could do was to come within a 5x worse margin.

Like... oof. Americans make the biggest, Germans make the lightest, Italians make the prettiest. Only the Swede makes the quickest.