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Virtual Adviser's™ opinion
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 3-door coupe 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 Toyota-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 192hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 164hp engine designed by Mitsubishi.
SafetyUnfortunatelly, 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. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, Eclipse offers a potentially life-saving difference of 33% more metal.
ReliabilityReliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Toyota does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Toyota, as well as Mitsubishi, with the same average rating of 4.6 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as Celica rank it on average as 5.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.
Performance & Fuel economyToyota is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 225 kilometers per hour, 10km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be Celica, averaging around 8.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (34 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 33% difference compared to Eclipse!
Verdict
Toyota 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, Eclipse offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with Toyota 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 Toyota. 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. I suggest you spend two more minutes in order to find out which car, based on your needs and budget, would be picked by the virtual adviser™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.