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 3-door hatchback body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. Both the engines are FIAT-engineered . The first one has a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 65hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 60hp one.

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. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. 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, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the Italian car offers a considerable difference of 22% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that FIAT does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Zastava with an average rating of 3.4, and models under the FIAT badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Yugo Tempo as average reliability-wise, and Palio is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Serbian car rank it on average as 3.7, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.

Zastava is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 155 kilometers per hour, 2km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the Serbian car, averaging around 0 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (INF mpg), in combined cycle. That's INF% difference compared to the Italian car!

FIAT is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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 Italian car offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with Zastava 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 Zastava. 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 thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.