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 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the BMW and front in the case of the Chrysler). The first one has a BMW-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 306hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 253hp engine designed by Chrysler.

The fact that the BMW got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, offers a slight advantage, as the 4-star rating is better than none. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. On the other hand, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the American 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 BMW does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Chrysler badge with 4.4 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed 5 Series as average reliability-wise, and 300C is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the German car rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.5 out of 5.

BMW is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 3 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 31km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 11.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (26 mpg), in combined cycle.

Chrysler 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 much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. 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.