Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by diesel engines and utilizing the 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (front for the Citroen and rear in the case of the Mercedes Benz). The first one has a Peugeot-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 170hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 224hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

The fact that the Citroen 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. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing 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 French car offers a marginal difference of 5% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Citroen does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Citroen with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.4 out of 5. Independent research findings rank C6 as average reliability-wise, and CLS 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 4.5 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 246 kilometers per hour, 29km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the French car, averaging around 6.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 15% difference compared to the German car.

Citroen 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 beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. From there things take a different direction, 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... 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.