Well, these are two pretty similar cars we have here! It's only details that could potentially make the difference. Considering they both belong to the micro car segment and utilize the same 5-door hatchback body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Suzuki-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 63hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 12-valves 55hp engine designed by Hyundai.

The fact that the Hyundai got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, isn't really an advantage, taken the poor 3-star rating it received. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the micro car segment, which is generally a misfortune safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the Korean car offers a marginal difference of 6% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Suzuki does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Suzuki, as well as Hyundai, with the same average rating of 4.5 out of 5. The same official information place Alto as average reliability-wise, and Atos is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Japanese car rank it on average as 4.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Suzuki is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.3 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 155 kilometers per hour, 13km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Japanese car, averaging around 4.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (58 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 29% difference compared to the Korean car.

Hyundai 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 Korean car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with Suzuki offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Suzuki. 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.