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 city car segment and utilize the same 3-door hatchback 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 Peugeot-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 96hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 100hp engine designed by Ford.

A starting point here would be to take a look at the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests which were performed on both of the cars, with the Ford being a slightly better choice apparently. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the city car segment, which is generally not a very good thing 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, the American car offers a marginal difference of 9% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Ford does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Citroen with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Ford badge with 4.4 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Saxo as average reliability-wise, and Fiesta is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the French car rank it on average as 4.8 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Ford is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.3 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 182 kilometers per hour, 11km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the American car, averaging around 0 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (INF mpg), in combined cycle. That's INF% difference compared to the French car!

Ford 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 American car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. It all continues in the same direction, with Ford 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 Ford. 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.