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 diesel engine choice they offer. The first one has a Renault-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 75hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 3-cylinder, 12-valves 90hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the Škoda being a slightly better choice apparently. 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 that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. 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 3% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Škoda does have a slight advantage, 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 Škoda badge with 4.3 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Sandero as average reliability-wise, and Fabia is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Romanian car rank it on average as 4.3 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Škoda is way more agile, reaching 100km/h in 3.5 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 182 kilometers per hour, 18km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 3.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (82 mpg), in combined cycle.

Škoda 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 Czech car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Škoda 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 Škoda. 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.