Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by diesel engines and utilizing the 5-door suv body style within the same 'SUV' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the SSangYong and front in the case of the Dodge). The first one has a Mercedes Benz-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 5-cylinder, 10-valves 163hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 140hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the suv segment, which is generally a very good thing 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 Korean car offers a considerable difference of 10% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Dodge does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of SSangYong with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Dodge badge with 3.4 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Kyron as average reliability-wise, and Journey is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Korean car rank it on average as 3.9, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.3 out of 5.

Dodge is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 188 kilometers per hour, 14km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the American car, averaging around 6.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 46% difference compared to the Korean car!

SSangYong 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 Korean car offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with Dodge 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 Dodge. 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.