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 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Executive car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Volkswagen and rear in the case of the BMW). The first one has a Volkswagen-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 280hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 326hp engine designed by BMW.

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 executive car segment, which is generally a fortune 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, Phaeton offers a considerable difference of 12% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Volkswagen does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Volkswagen, as well as BMW, with the same average rating of 4.2 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as Phaeton rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

BMW is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.7 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, exactly the same as the other car does. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be 7 Series, averaging around 9.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (29 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 16% difference compared to Phaeton.

Volkswagen 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, Phaeton offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with BMW being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! I believe that, when we take all into account, we have only one winner here - the BMW. 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™, among thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.