Overview

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.

Safety

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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. 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. On the other hand, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, Eclipse offers a potentially life-saving difference of 33% more metal.

Reliability

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Toyota does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, 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 economy

Toyota 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 outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. 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. Anyway, that's the most objective conclusion I could've came up with and it's based solely on the information found on this website. Aspects such as design, practicality, brand value and driving experience are there for you to measure them out. 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.