Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol engines and utilizing the 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (front for the Volvo and rear in the case of the Mercedes Benz). The first one has a Ford-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 180hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 156hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

The fact that the Mercedes Benz got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, puts it sky-high safety-wise, in my eyes at least. 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, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Volvo does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Volvo with an average rating of 3.2, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank S80 as average reliability-wise, and E is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Swedish car rank it on average as 1.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

There's not enough data for me to elaborate on the subject, I'm affraid.

Mercedes Benz 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 German car beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. When it comes to performance, both vehicles provide similar experience, so I wouldn't point any of them out. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Mercedes Benz. 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.