Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol engines and utilizing the 5-door hatchback body style within the same 'Small family car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Volkswagen and front in the case of the Peugeot). The first one has a Volkswagen-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 12-valves 194hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 136hp engine designed by Peugeot.

The fact that the Peugeot got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, isn't really an advantage, taken the poor 3-star rating it received. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the German car offers a considerable difference of 22% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Peugeot does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Volkswagen with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Peugeot badge with 4.3 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Golf as average reliability-wise, and 306 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 4.2 out of 5.

Volkswagen is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 224 kilometers per hour, 22km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the French car, averaging around 9.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (31 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 15% difference compared to the German car.

Peugeot 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 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 Volkswagen 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 Peugeot. Anyway, that's the most objective conclusion I could've came up with and it's based solely on the information found on this website. Aspects such as design, practicality, brand value and driving experience are there for you to measure them out. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.