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 luxury car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan 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 Alfa Romeo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 226hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 30-valves 193hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

The fact that the Škoda 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, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Italian car offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Škoda is significantly less fault-prone, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Alfa Romeo with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Škoda badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank 166 as average reliability-wise, and Superb is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Italian car rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.9 out of 5.

Alfa Romeo is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 243 kilometers per hour, 6km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the Czech car, averaging around 9.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (29 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 26% difference compared to the Italian car!

Škoda 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 Czech car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with Alfa Romeo offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Škoda. 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.