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 230hp 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, 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 considerable difference of 10% 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, when all the models are taken into account. 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. Independent research findings rank 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 4.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.8 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 10km/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 48% 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 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 Mercedes Benz. 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.