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 cabriolet body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the Porsche and front in the case of the Alfa Romeo). The first one has a Porsche-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 252hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 240hp engine designed by Alfa Romeo.

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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the sports 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. On the other hand, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Italian car offers a marginal difference of 5% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Porsche with an average rating of 3.7, and models under the Alfa Romeo badge with 4.2 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Boxster as average reliability-wise, and GTV is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 2.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Porsche is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 260 kilometers per hour, 18km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 10.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (26 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 23% difference compared to the Italian car!

Alfa Romeo is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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 Italian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Porsche offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's not difficult to say then that if I'd need to make a choice, it would definitely be 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.