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 4-door sedan 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 100hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 160hp engine designed by Honda.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), 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 small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle 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 marginal difference of 1% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Honda does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Ford with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Honda badge with 4.7 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Focus as average reliability-wise, and Civic is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the American car rank it on average as 4.8, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Honda is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 215 kilometers per hour, 30km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the American car, averaging around 7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (40 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 20% difference compared to the Japanese car.

Honda 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 offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with Honda being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Ford. 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.