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 city 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 Renault-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 3-cylinder, 12-valves 73hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 3-cylinder, 12-valves 111hp engine designed by Suzuki.

A starting point here would be to take a look at the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests which were performed on both of the cars, with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the city car segment, which is generally not 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 Romanian car offers a marginal difference of 7% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Suzuki as a brand displays somewhat better results, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Dacia with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Suzuki badge with 4.5 out of 5. The same official information place Sandero as average reliability-wise, and Baleno is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Romanian car rank it on average as 3.7 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Suzuki is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.8 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 200 kilometers per hour, 42km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Japanese car, averaging around 4.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (63 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 16% difference compared to the Romanian car.

Suzuki 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 Romanian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Suzuki being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. 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 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.