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 hatchback body style within the same 'City car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Suzuki and front in the case of the FIAT). The first one has a Suzuki-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 100hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 100hp engine designed by FIAT.

The fact that the FIAT got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, isn't really an advantage, taken the poor 3-star rating it received. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the city car segment, which is generally not a very good thing safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Japanese car offers a marginal difference of 4% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Suzuki does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Suzuki with an average rating of 4.6, and models under the FIAT badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Ignis as average reliability-wise, and Panda is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Japanese car rank it on average as 3.8, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

There's not enough data for me to elaborate on the subject, I'm affraid.

FIAT 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 Italian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. When it comes to performance, both vehicles provide similar experience, so I wouldn't point any of them out. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. No mistake, whatever you decide here, but I'd still go for the FIAT. 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.