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 coupe body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (front for the Alfa Romeo and rear in the case of the Mercedes Benz). The first one has a Alfa Romeo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 240hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 18-valves 224hp 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. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Italian car offers a marginal difference of 2% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Mercedes Benz does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Alfa Romeo with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank GTV as average reliability-wise, and CLK 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 5.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Alfa Romeo is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 255 kilometers per hour, 15km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 10.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (28 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 31% difference compared to the Italian car!

Mercedes Benz 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 Italian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Alfa Romeo outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Mercedes Benz. 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. 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.