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 city 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 Mitsubishi-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 3-cylinder, 12-valves 64hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 77hp engine designed by Honda.

A starting point here would be to take a look at the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests which were performed on both of the cars, with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the city car segment, which is generally not a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Japanese car offers a marginal difference of 6% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Honda does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Smart with an average rating of 3.9, and models under the Honda badge with 4.7 out of 5. The same official information place ForFour as average reliability-wise, and Jazz 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 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Honda is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 170 kilometers per hour, 12km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 5.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (52 mpg), in combined cycle.

Honda is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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 Japanese car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Honda being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... No mistake, whatever you decide here, but I'd still go for the Honda. 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.