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 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 6-cylinder, 24-valves 196hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 210hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

A starting point here would be to take a look at the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests which were performed on both of the cars, with the Audi being a slightly better choice apparently. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. 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, the Swedish car offers a marginal difference of 2% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Volvo does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Volvo with an average rating of 3.2, and models under the Audi badge with 4.2 out of 5. Independent research findings rank S80 as average reliability-wise, and A6 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.

Audi is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 243 kilometers per hour, 18km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 8.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (32 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 25% difference compared to the Swedish car!

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, the German car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Audi 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 Audi. 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. I suggest you spend two more minutes in order to find out which car, based on your needs and budget, would be picked by the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.