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 Alfa Romeo and rear in the case of the BMW). The first one has a Alfa Romeo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 220hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 258hp engine designed by BMW.

The fact that the BMW got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, offers a slight advantage, as the 4-star rating is better than none. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. 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, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Italian car offers a marginal difference of 4% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that BMW does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Alfa Romeo with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the BMW badge with 4.1 out of 5. The same official information place 166 as average reliability-wise, and 5 Series 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 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

BMW is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 14km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 8.8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (32 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 48% difference compared to the Italian car!

BMW 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 German car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. It all continues in the same direction, with BMW 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 BMW. 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.