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 Ford-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 75hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 82hp engine designed by Nissan.

A starting point here would be to take a look at the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests which were performed on both of the cars, with the Ford being a slightly better choice apparently. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. 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, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the American car offers a considerable difference of 11% 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. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Ford with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Nissan badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Fiesta as average reliability-wise, and Micra is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the American car rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.

Nissan is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 170 kilometers per hour, 3km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Japanese car, averaging around 6.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (46 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 13% difference compared to the American car.

Ford 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 American car beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. From there things take a different direction, with Nissan being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Nissan. 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. I suggest you spend two more minutes in order to find out which car, based on your needs and budget, would be picked by the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.