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 luxury car segment and utilize the same 5-door wagon body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific diesel engine choice they offer. The first one has a Volvo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 5-cylinder, 20-valves 175hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 150hp engine designed by FIAT.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, V70 offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Volvo with an average rating of 4.6, and models under the SAAB badge with 4.1 out of 5. Independent research findings rank V70 as average reliability-wise, and 9-5 is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as V70 rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.1 out of 5.

Volvo is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 215 kilometers per hour, 10km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be V70, averaging around 6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (47 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 13% difference compared to 9-5.

Volvo 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, V70 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™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.