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 (rear for the Jaguar and front in the case of the Lancia). The first one has a Jaguar-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 400hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 230hp engine designed by Alfa Romeo.

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 luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the British car offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Lancia does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Jaguar, as well as Lancia, with the same average rating of 4.1 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the British car rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Jaguar is way more agile, reaching 100km/h in 3.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 10km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the British car, averaging around 12.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (23 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 19% difference compared to the Italian car!

Lancia 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. It all continues in the same direction, with Jaguar 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 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. 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.