Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by diesel engines and utilizing the 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (front for the Lancia and rear in the case of the Mercedes Benz). The first one has a FIAT-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 5-cylinder, 20-valves 175hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 224hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Italian 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 Lancia does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Lancia, as well as Mercedes Benz, with the same average rating of 4.3 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Thesis as average reliability-wise, and CLS 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 3.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.5 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.8 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 246 kilometers per hour, 21km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 7.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (37 mpg), in combined cycle.

Mercedes Benz 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 slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Mercedes Benz outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. 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 Mercedes Benz. 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.