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 city 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 Chevrolet-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 93hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 89hp engine designed by Lada.

The fact that the Chevrolet got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, isn't really an advantage, taken the poor 3-star rating it received. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the city car segment, which is generally not a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the Russian 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 Chevrolet does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Chevrolet with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Lada badge with 4.3 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Kalos as average reliability-wise, and Kalina is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the American car rank it on average as 4.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Chevrolet is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 176 kilometers per hour, 11km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 6.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle.

Chevrolet 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 slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Chevrolet being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Chevrolet. 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 thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.