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 sports car segment and utilize the same 2-door coupe body style and the 4 x 4 wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a BMW-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 245hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 435hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

Unfortunatelly, 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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, Mercedes Benz CL offers a potentially life-saving difference of 33% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.4 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as 4 Series Coupe rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, exactly the same as the other car does. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be 4 Series Coupe, averaging around 6.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (42 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 48% difference compared to Mercedes Benz CL!

BMW 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, Mercedes Benz CL offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. It all continues in the same direction, with Mercedes Benz offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... I believe that, when we take all into account, we have only one winner here - the 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. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.