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Virtual Adviser's™ opinion
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 Nissan). The first one has a BMW-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 560hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 290hp engine designed by Nissan.
SafetyUnfortunatelly, 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 luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it?
ReliabilityI don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Nissan as a brand displays somewhat better results, when all the models are taken into account. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Nissan badge with 4.3 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.
Performance & Fuel economyBMW 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 250 kilometers per hour, 250km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the German car, averaging around 9.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (29 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 8% difference compared to the Japanese car.
Verdict
Nissan 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 this case though, it seems that both cars show similar levels of passenger protection all together, so that won't break a tie. But one thing that actually could is the performance, 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. Nevertheless, let's not forget that people have different preferences and needs, so what really counts is your personal feel. I'm only here to help. 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.