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 luxury car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan 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 6-cylinder, 24-valves 210hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 220hp engine designed by Alfa Romeo.

The fact that the Peugeot got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, offers a slight advantage, as the 4-star rating is better than none. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. 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, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the French car offers a marginal difference of 6% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Peugeot is significantly less fault-prone, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Peugeot with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Alfa Romeo badge with 4.2 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed 607 as average reliability-wise, and 166 is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the French car rank it on average as 4.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Alfa Romeo is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 236 kilometers per hour, 4km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the French car, averaging around 10.2 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (28 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 27% difference compared to the Italian car!

Peugeot 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 Alfa Romeo offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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 Peugeot. 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.