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 75hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 83hp engine designed by Suzuki.

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 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, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, Demio offers a marginal difference of 5% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Suzuki does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Mazda with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Suzuki badge with 4.5 out of 5. The same official information place Demio as average reliability-wise, and Ignis is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as Demio rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Suzuki is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 160 kilometers per hour, exactly the same as the other car does. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Ignis, averaging around 6.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (44 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 14% difference compared to Demio.

Suzuki is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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 slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Suzuki being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. 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 Suzuki. 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.