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 'Small family car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Subaru and front in the case of the Mitsubishi). The first one has a Subaru-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 105hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 111hp engine designed by Mitsubishi.

The fact that the Mitsubishi 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 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, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, Impreza offers a marginal difference of 4% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Subaru with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Mitsubishi badge with 4.6 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Impreza as average reliability-wise, and Lancer is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as Impreza rank it on average as 4.1, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.7 out of 5.

Mitsubishi is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.8 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 191 kilometers per hour, 17km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Lancer, averaging around 6.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (44 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 23% difference compared to Impreza.

Mitsubishi 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, Lancer beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. It all continues in the same direction, with Mitsubishi 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 Mitsubishi. 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. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.