Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by hybrid engines and utilizing the 5-door wagon body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Audi and front in the case of the Volvo). The first one has a Volkswagen-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 299hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 408hp engine designed by Volvo.

The first thing to look into here would be the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests performed on the two cars. Good thing is that both vehicles got tested, with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it?

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Volvo does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Audi with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Volvo badge with 3.2 out of 5. Independent research findings rank A6 as average reliability-wise, and V90 is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Volvo is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, exactly the same as the other car does. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 2.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (138 mpg), in combined cycle.

Volvo 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 this case though, it seems that both cars show similar levels of passenger protection all together, so that won't break a tie. But one thing that actually could is the performance, with Volvo being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. 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. I suggest you spend two more minutes in order to find out which car, based on your needs and budget, would be picked by the virtual adviser™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.