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 Opel-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 200hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 3-cylinder, 6-valves 100hp engine designed by Smart.

Unfortunatelly, 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, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, Speedster offers a considerable difference of 12% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Smart does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Opel with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Smart badge with 3.9 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 Speedster rank it on average as 4.3, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Opel is way more agile, reaching 100km/h in 4.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 243 kilometers per hour, 53km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be Roadster, averaging around 5.3 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (53 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 60% difference compared to Speedster!

Opel 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, Speedster offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. It all continues in the same direction, with Opel outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. 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.