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 small family car segment and utilize the same 5-door hatchback body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific diesel engine choice they offer. The first one has a Peugeot-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 120hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 90hp engine designed by Toyota.

The first thing to look into here would be the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests performed on the two cars. Good thing is that both vehicles got tested, with the same number of safety stars gained in the process. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the small family 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, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the Japanese car offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Toyota 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 4.0, and models under the Toyota badge with 4.6 out of 5. Independent research findings rank C4 as average reliability-wise, and Auris is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the French car rank it on average as 4.3, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.8 out of 5.

Citroen 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 197 kilometers per hour, 22km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the French car, averaging around 3.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (78 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 25% difference compared to the Japanese car.

Toyota 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 Japanese car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Citroen 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 Citroen. 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.