Compare two cars
Compare any two cars and get our Virtual Adviser™ opinion
Marketing
Dimensons & Outlines
Engine
Performance (manual gearbox)
Performance (automatic gearbox)
Expenses
Virtual Adviser's™ opinion
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 suv segment and utilize the same 5-door suv body style and the 4 x 4 wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. 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 306hp engine designed by BMW.
SafetyUnfortunatelly, 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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the suv segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars.
ReliabilityManufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Volkswagen does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. 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 Touareg rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.
Performance & Fuel economyBMW is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 235 kilometers per hour, 8km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 10 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (28 mpg), in combined cycle.
Verdict
Volkswagen 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 this case though, it seems that both cars show similar levels of passenger protection all together, so that won't break a tie. But one thing that actually could is the performance, with BMW being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. 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.