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 5-door hatchback 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 Nissan-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 125hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 108hp engine designed by Suzuki.

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 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, Tiida offers a marginal difference of 8% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Suzuki 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 Nissan with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Suzuki badge with 4.5 out of 5. The same official information place Tiida as average reliability-wise, and Liana is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as Tiida rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.8 out of 5.

Nissan is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.3 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 190 kilometers per hour, 15km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Liana, averaging around 6.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (41 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 13% difference compared to Tiida.

Suzuki 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, Tiida offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Nissan being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... I believe that, when we take all into account, we have only one winner here - the Suzuki. 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.