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 suv segment and utilize the same 5-door suv body style and the 4 x 4 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 4-cylinder, 16-valves 150hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 129hp engine designed by Suzuki.

The fact that the Dacia got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, isn't really an advantage, taken the poor 3-star rating it received. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the suv segment, which is generally a very 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 Romanian car offers a marginal difference of 8% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Suzuki as a brand displays somewhat better results, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Dacia with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Suzuki 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. That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the Romanian car rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Dacia is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.5 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 198 kilometers per hour, 3km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Japanese car, averaging around 5.8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (49 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 17% difference compared to the Romanian car.

Suzuki 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 Romanian car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. It all continues in the same direction, with Dacia 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. 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™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.