In this paper we have tried to build effective model for classification of motor oils by base stock and viscosity class. Three (3) sets of near infrared (NIR) spectra (1125, 1010, and 1050 spectra) were used for classification of motor oils into 3 or 4 classes according to their base stock (synthetic, semi-synthetic, and mineral), kinematic viscosity at low temperature (SAE 0W, 5W, 10W, and 15W) and kinematic viscosity at high temperature (SAE 20, 30, 40, and 50). The abilities of three (3) different classification methods: regularized discriminant analysis (RDA), soft independent modelling of class analogy (SIMCA), and multilayer perceptron (MLP) - were also compared. In all cases NIR spectroscopy was found to be quite effective for motor oil classification. MLP classification technique was found to be the most effective one. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.