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 small 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 Rover-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 150hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 20-valves 125hp engine designed by Audi.

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 small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the British car offers a marginal difference of 9% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Rover does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Rover, as well as Seat, with the same average rating of 4.5 out of 5. Independent research findings rank 45 as average reliability-wise, and Toledo is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the British car rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.

Rover is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 203 kilometers per hour, 3km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Spanish car, averaging around 8.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (34 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 12% difference compared to the British car.

Rover 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 British car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Rover outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. 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 Rover. 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.