Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol 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 Alfa Romeo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 215hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 272hp 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, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Italian car offers a considerable difference of 10% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Lancia does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Lancia with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.4 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 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 16km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 10.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (28 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 35% difference compared to the Italian car!

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 significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with Mercedes Benz being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. 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 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. I suggest you spend two more minutes in order to find out which car, based on your needs and budget, would be picked by the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.