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 2-door cabriolet body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Jaguar and rear in the case of the Mercedes Benz). The first one has a Jaguar-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 380hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 571hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

Unfortunatelly, neither of the two vehicles was submitted to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) testing. This makes it virtually impossible for me to pick one over the other and I'm generally against buying such cars as the safety should really always come first. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the sports 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 British 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 both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Jaguar with an average rating of 4.1, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.4 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed F-Type as average reliability-wise, and SLS is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the British car rank it on average as 4.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.3 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 317 kilometers per hour, 42km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the British car, averaging around 8.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (32 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 48% difference compared to the German car!

Mercedes Benz 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 British car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Mercedes Benz 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 Jaguar. 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™, among thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.