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 suv segment and utilize the same 5-door suv 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 Porsche-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 340hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 40-valves 310hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

The fact that the Volkswagen got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, puts it sky-high safety-wise, in my eyes at least. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the suv segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, Cayenne offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Volkswagen as a brand displays somewhat better results, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Porsche with an average rating of 3.7, and models under the Volkswagen badge with 4.2 out of 5. The same official information place Cayenne as average reliability-wise, and Touareg is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as Cayenne rank it on average as 4.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Porsche 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 242 kilometers per hour, 24km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Touareg, averaging around 14.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (19 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 9% difference compared to Cayenne.

Volkswagen 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, Touareg beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. From there things take a different direction, with Porsche being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Volkswagen. 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.