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 Mazda-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 63hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 3-cylinder, 12-valves 58hp engine designed by Daihatsu.

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 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, Demio offers a potentially life-saving difference of 30% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Daihatsu does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Mazda with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Daihatsu badge with 4.2 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Demio as average reliability-wise, and Cuore is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as Demio rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.5 out of 5.

Daihatsu is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.2 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 140 kilometers per hour, 11km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Cuore, averaging around 5.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (55 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 37% difference compared to Demio.

Mazda 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, Demio offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. When it comes to performance, both vehicles provide similar experience, so I wouldn't point any of them out. Cuore , on the other hand, consumps significantly less fuel, and that's a big plus. At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. 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.