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 coupe 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 BMW-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 245hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 385hp engine designed by Jaguar.

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, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the British car offers a considerable difference of 16% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Jaguar badge with 4.2 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed 4 Series Coupe as average reliability-wise, and XK 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 5.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Jaguar 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 250 kilometers per hour, exactly the same as the other car does. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 6.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 70% difference compared to the British car!

Jaguar 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 British car offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. It all continues in the same direction, with Jaguar offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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 BMW. Nevertheless, let's not forget that people have different preferences and needs, so what really counts is your personal feel. I'm only here to help. 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.