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 coupe body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the Jaguar and 4 x 4 in the case of the Audi). The first one has a Jaguar-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 510hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 450hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

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. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle 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 4% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem 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, as well as Audi, with the same average rating of 4.2 out of 5. Independent research findings rank XK as average reliability-wise, and A5 Coupe 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 2.8, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Audi is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.3 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, exactly the same as the other car does. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the German car, averaging around 10.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (27 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 17% difference compared to the British car.

Audi 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 Audi offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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 Audi. 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™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.