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 3-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 FIAT-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 75hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 3-cylinder, 12-valves 58hp engine designed by Daihatsu.

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 city car segment, which is generally not a very good thing safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Italian car offers a potentially life-saving difference of 40% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Daihatsu does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of FIAT with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Daihatsu badge with 4.1 out of 5. The same official information place Palio as average reliability-wise, and Cuore 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 4.7, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.

FIAT is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 168 kilometers per hour, 28km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Japanese car, averaging around 5.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (55 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 33% difference compared to the Italian car.

FIAT 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 Italian car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. It all continues in the same direction, with FIAT offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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 FIAT. Anyway, that's the most objective conclusion I could've came up with and it's based solely on the information found on this website. Aspects such as design, practicality, brand value and driving experience are there for you to measure them out. 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.