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 luxury car segment and utilize the same 5-door wagon body style and the 4 x 4 wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Mercedes Benz-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 612hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 320hp engine designed by Volvo.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Volvo does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Mercedes Benz with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Volvo badge with 3.2 out of 5. Independent research findings rank E as average reliability-wise, and V90 is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.7 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 10km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Swedish car, averaging around 7.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (37 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 22% difference compared to the German car.

Volvo 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 this case though, it seems that both cars show similar levels of passenger protection all together, so that won't break a tie. But one thing that actually could is the performance, with Mercedes Benz outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Volvo. 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 more than 12.000 different ones in our database.