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 5-door hatchback body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific diesel engine choice they offer. The first one has a Renault-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 82hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 92hp engine designed by Peugeot.

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 same number of safety stars gained in the process. 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 French car offers a marginal difference of 4% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Nissan 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 Nissan with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Citroen badge with 4.1 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Micra as average reliability-wise, and C3 is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Japanese car rank it on average as 4.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Citroen is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 183 kilometers per hour, 13km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 4.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (64 mpg), in combined cycle.

Citroen 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 French car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Citroen 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 Citroen. 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.