Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol engines and utilizing the 5-door hatchback body style within the same 'Small family car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the BMW and 4 x 4 in the case of the Subaru). The first one has a BMW-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 170hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 150hp engine designed by Subaru.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the BMW being a slightly better choice apparently. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. On the other hand, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Japanese car offers a marginal difference of 4% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Subaru does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW, as well as Subaru, with the same average rating of 4.2 out of 5. The same official information place 1 Series as average reliability-wise, and Impreza is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 4.3, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.8 out of 5.

BMW is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.8 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 224 kilometers per hour, 31km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 6.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (44 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 31% difference compared to the Japanese car!

Subaru 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 slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with BMW being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. 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 BMW. 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.