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 executive car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan 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 12-cylinder, 48-valves 445hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 12-cylinder, 48-valves 612hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the executive car segment, which is generally a fortune safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, all the models observed together. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.4 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed 7 Series as average reliability-wise, and S is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as 7 Series rank it on average as 4.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.1 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at kilometers per hour, 250km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be 7 Series, averaging around 13.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (21 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 11% difference compared to Mercedes Benz S.

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 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 Mercedes Benz being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. 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. 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.