We are here considering two somewhat similar cars, but we can't deny some of the obvious differences. For a start, they are not even classified under the same segment, with the Audi being a luxury car and the Volvo representing large family car vehicle class. The first one has a Volkswagen-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 40-valves 300hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 5-cylinder, 20-valves 300hp engine designed by Volvo.

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 Volvo being a slightly better choice apparently. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. The first vehicle is a luxury car and that gives it a marginal advantage over the large family car competitor, at least that's what statistics show. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the German 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 Volvo does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Audi with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Volvo badge with 4.6 out of 5. Independent research findings rank A6 as average reliability-wise, and S60 is more or less at the same 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.

Volvo is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.2 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 the Swedish car, averaging around 10.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (26 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 21% difference compared to the German car!

Volvo 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 Volvo 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 Volvo. 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.