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 petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Peugeot-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 136hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 130hp engine designed by Ford.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the Ford being a slightly better choice apparently. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. 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? On the other hand, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the American car offers a marginal difference of 8% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Ford does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Citroen with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Ford badge with 4.4 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Xsara as average reliability-wise, and Focus 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 4.2, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Citroen is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.7 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 210 kilometers per hour, 9km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the French car, averaging around 7.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (37 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 13% difference compared to the American car.

Ford 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 American car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with Citroen offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say 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.