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 large family car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Nissan-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 245hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 5-cylinder, 20-valves 213hp engine designed by Volvo.

The fact that the Volvo got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, offers a slight advantage, as the 4-star rating is better than none. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the large family car segment, which is generally a good thing safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Japanese car offers a marginal difference of 2% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Nissan does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Nissan with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Volvo badge with 4.6 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Japanese car rank it on average as 4.3, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.6 out of 5.

Volvo is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 235 kilometers per hour, 35km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Swedish car, averaging around 9.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (31 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 16% difference compared to the Japanese car.

Nissan 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, the Swedish car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. It all continues in the same direction, with Volvo offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Volvo. 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.