Compare two cars
Compare any two cars and get our Virtual Adviser™ opinion
Marketing
Dimensons & Outlines
Engine
Performance (manual gearbox)
Performance (automatic gearbox)
Expenses
Virtual Adviser's™ opinion
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 cabriolet body style and the rear 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 6-cylinder, 24-valves 265hp engine designed by Porsche.
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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, BMW Z4 offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.
ReliabilityI don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem 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 Porsche badge with 3.7 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as BMW Z4 rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.
Performance & Fuel economyBMW is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.1 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 250 kilometers per hour, 14km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be BMW Z4, averaging around 6.8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (42 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 24% difference compared to Boxster.
Verdict
BMW 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, BMW Z4 offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with BMW offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.