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 sports car segment and utilize the same 2-door cabriolet body style and the rear 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 6-cylinder, 24-valves 375hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 306hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

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 it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. On the other hand, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, SLK offers a marginal difference of 4% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Mercedes Benz does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Porsche with an average rating of 3.9, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.3 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 Boxster rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Porsche is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 290 kilometers per hour, 40km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be SLK, averaging around 7.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (40 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 39% difference compared to Boxster!

Mercedes Benz 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, SLK offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Porsche outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. 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 Mercedes Benz. 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.