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 2-door coupe body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the Porsche and 4 x 4 in the case of the Audi). The first one has a Porsche-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 350hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 430hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

Unfortunatelly, neither of the two vehicles was submitted to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) testing. This makes it virtually impossible for me to pick one over the other and I'm generally against buying such cars as the safety should really always come first. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. On the other hand, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, Audi R8 offers a considerable difference of 11% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Audi does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Porsche with an average rating of 3.7, and models under the Audi badge with 4.2 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as 911 rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Audi is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 302 kilometers per hour, 13km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be 911, averaging around 9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (31 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 58% difference compared to Audi R8!

Audi 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, Audi R8 offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. It all continues in the same direction, with Audi offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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 Porsche. 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. 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.