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 FIAT-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 60hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 98hp engine designed by Lada.

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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. 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 Russian car offers a marginal difference of 9% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that FIAT does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of FIAT, as well as Lada, with the same average rating of 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Albea as average reliability-wise, and Priora is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Italian car rank it on average as 4.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.5 out of 5.

Lada is way more agile, reaching 100km/h in 5.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 183 kilometers per hour, 33km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Russian car, averaging around 6.3 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (45 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 13% difference compared to the Italian car.

Lada 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 Russian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Lada outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. 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 Lada. 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. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, among thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.