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 sports car segment and utilize the same 2-door coupe 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 5-cylinder, 20-valves 163hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 130hp engine designed by Ford.

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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Swedish car offers a considerable difference of 12% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Ford 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 4.6, and models under the Ford badge with 4.4 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Swedish car rank it on average as 5.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Volvo is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 210 kilometers per hour, 1km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the American car, averaging around 8.3 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (34 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 17% difference compared to the Swedish car.

Ford 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 significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. It all continues in the same direction, with Volvo being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Ford. 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.