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 5-door wagon body style within the same 'Large family car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Subaru and rear in the case of the BMW). The first one has a Subaru-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 162hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 170hp engine designed by BMW.

The fact that the BMW 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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the large family car segment, which is generally a good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the German car offers a marginal difference of 2% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Subaru 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 Subaru with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the BMW badge with 4.1 out of 5. The same official information place Legacy 11% above average, and 3 Series 32% below the first one. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Japanese car rank it on average as 4.4, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.3 out of 5.

BMW is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 226 kilometers per hour, 24km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 6.2 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (46 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 39% difference compared to the Japanese car!

Subaru is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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. It all continues in the same direction, with BMW 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 BMW. 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.