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 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 Volkswagen-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 105hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 107hp engine designed by Renault.

The fact that the Renault got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, puts it sky-high safety-wise, in my eyes at least. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. 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? Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Spanish car offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Renault does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Seat with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Renault badge with 4.1 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Cordoba as average reliability-wise, and Thalia is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the Spanish car rank it on average as 4.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.8 out of 5.

Seat is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 193 kilometers per hour, 8km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Spanish car, averaging around 6.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 15% difference compared to the French car.

Seat 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 Seat offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! 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.