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 luxury 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 Alfa Romeo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 230hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 253hp engine designed by Chrysler.

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 luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Italian car offers a marginal difference of 5% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Lancia as a brand displays somewhat better results, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Lancia with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Chrysler badge with 4.4 out of 5. The same official information place Thesis as average reliability-wise, and 300C 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 4.5 out of 5.

Lancia is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 240 kilometers per hour, 21km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the American car, averaging around 11.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (25 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 34% difference compared to the Italian car!

Chrysler 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. It all continues in the same direction, with Lancia offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Chrysler. 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.