Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol engines and utilizing the 2-door cabriolet body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the BMW and 4 x 4 in the case of the Porsche). The first one has a BMW-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 400hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 420hp engine designed by Porsche.

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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, BMW Z8 offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that BMW does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Porsche badge with 3.9 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 BMW Z8 rank it on average as 5.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Porsche 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 305 kilometers per hour, 55km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be 911, averaging around 12.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (22 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 12% difference compared to BMW Z8.

BMW 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, BMW Z8 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. 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 Porsche. 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. 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.