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 small family 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, 8-valves 100hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 110hp engine designed by Rover.

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 small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the British car offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Rover does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Seat with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Rover badge with 4.5 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Toledo as average reliability-wise, and 45 is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Spanish car rank it on average as 2.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.

Rover is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.6 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 190 kilometers per hour, 2km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 6.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (41 mpg), in combined cycle.

Rover 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 British car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Rover offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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 Rover. 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.