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 5-cylinder, 20-valves 170hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 150hp 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, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. On the other hand, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the British car offers a marginal difference of 2% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning 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 5.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Seat is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 225 kilometers per hour, 22km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Spanish car, averaging around 8.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (32 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 8% difference compared to the British car.

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. 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! It's not difficult to say then that if I'd need to make a choice, it would definitely be the Seat. 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.