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 large family car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan 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 Volvo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 190hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 152hp engine designed by Toyota.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the large family car segment, which is generally a good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the Swedish car offers a marginal difference of 7% more metal.

Reliability 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 results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Volvo, as well as Toyota, with the same average rating of 4.6 out of 5. Independent research findings rank S60 as average reliability-wise, and Avensis is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Swedish car rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Volvo is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 230 kilometers per hour, 30km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Swedish car, averaging around 5.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (50 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 16% difference compared to the Japanese car.

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, the Swedish car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Volvo 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 Volvo. 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.