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 3-door coupe body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Alfa Romeo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 185hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 200hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

The fact that the Volkswagen got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, puts it sky-high safety-wise, in my eyes at least. 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, the Italian car offers a considerable difference of 14% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Volkswagen as a brand displays somewhat better results, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Alfa Romeo, as well as Volkswagen, with the same average rating of 4.2 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Brera as average reliability-wise, and Scirocco is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Italian car rank it on average as 4.8, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.4 out of 5.

Volkswagen is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 235 kilometers per hour, 13km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the German car, averaging around 7.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (37 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 24% difference compared to the Italian car.

Volkswagen 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 German car beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. It all continues in the same direction, with Volkswagen being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. 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 Volkswagen. 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 thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.