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 small family car segment and utilize the same 5-door wagon 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 Renault-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 87hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 98hp engine designed by Lada.

The fact that the Dacia got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, isn't really an advantage, taken the poor 3-star rating it received. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Romanian car offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, all the models observed together. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Dacia with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Lada badge with 4.3 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Logan as average reliability-wise, and Priora is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Romanian car rank it on average as 4.5 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Lada is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 180 kilometers per hour, 17km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Russian car, averaging around 6.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 12% difference compared to the Romanian car.

Lada 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 Romanian car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with Lada 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 Lada. 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 thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.