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 Peugeot and rear in the case of the Toyota). The first one has a Peugeot-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 270hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 200hp engine designed by Subaru.

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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. 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, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the French car offers a marginal difference of 6% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears 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 Peugeot with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Toyota badge with 4.6 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed RCZ as average reliability-wise, and GT86 is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the French car rank it on average as 4.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Peugeot is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.7 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 24km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the French car, averaging around 0 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (INF mpg), in combined cycle. That's INF% difference compared to the Japanese car!

Toyota 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 offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Peugeot being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! 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. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.