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 cabriolet 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 Porsche). 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, 24-valves 252hp engine designed by Porsche.

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 5% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Alfa Romeo with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Porsche badge with 3.7 out of 5. The same official information place GTV as average reliability-wise, and Boxster is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the Italian car rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 2.0 out of 5.

Porsche is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 260 kilometers per hour, 18km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 10.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (26 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 23% difference compared to the Italian car!

Alfa Romeo is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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. From there things take a different direction, with Porsche offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's not difficult to say then that if I'd need to make a choice, it would definitely be the Porsche. 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.