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 city car segment and utilize the same 5-door hatchback 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 3-cylinder, 12-valves 71hp engine designed by Daihatsu.

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 city car segment, which is generally not a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the Romanian car offers a considerable difference of 14% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Dacia with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Subaru badge with 4.2 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Sandero as average reliability-wise, and Justy is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the Romanian car rank it on average as 4.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 1.8 out of 5.

Dacia is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 174 kilometers per hour, 14km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the Japanese car, averaging around 5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (57 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 44% difference compared to the Romanian car!

Dacia is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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 beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. It all continues in the same direction, with Dacia being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... No mistake, whatever you decide here, but I'd still go for the Dacia. 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.