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Virtual Adviser's™ opinion
We are here considering two somewhat similar cars, but we can't deny some of the obvious differences. For a start, they are not even classified under the same segment, with the Volvo being a luxury car and the Audi representing executive car vehicle class. The first one has a Volvo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 235hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 260hp engine designed by Volkswagen.
SafetyUnfortunatelly, neither of the two vehicles was submitted to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) testing. This makes it virtually impossible for me to pick one over the other and I'm generally against buying such cars as the safety should really always come first. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. The second vehicle is a executive car and that gives it a marginal advantage over the luxury car competitor, at least that's what statistics show. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the German car offers a marginal difference of 9% more metal.
ReliabilityManufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Volvo does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Volvo with an average rating of 4.6, and models under the Audi badge with 4.2 out of 5. The same official information place S80 as average reliability-wise, and A8 is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the Swedish car rank it on average as 4.7, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.
Performance & Fuel economyAudi is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 10km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 10.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (28 mpg), in combined cycle.
Verdict
Volvo appears just a bit more reliable, although the difference is truly marginal. The most important thing when deciding between any two vehicles should always be safety, both passive and active. In my opinion, everything taken into account, the German car offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. It all continues in the same direction, with Audi offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Audi. In any case that's my personal view, built upon all the data available to me. What should decide here though is the way you feel about the two vehicles, and I hope you'll find my guidelines useful in the process. In case you have two minutes to spare I invite you to define your needs, desires and budget and see which car would be chosen by the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.