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 city car segment and utilize the same 5-door hatchback 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 Peugeot-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 109hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 100hp engine designed by FIAT.

A starting point here would be to take a look at the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests which were performed on both of the cars, with the Citroen being a slightly better choice apparently. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the city car segment, which is generally not a very good thing safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the French car offers a marginal difference of 9% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that FIAT does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Citroen with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the FIAT badge with 4.3 out of 5. The same official information place C3 as average reliability-wise, and Panda is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the French car rank it on average as 3.9, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

FIAT 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 185 kilometers per hour, 7km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 6.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle.

FIAT 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 French car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with FIAT being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. 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.