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 mpv segment and utilize the same 5-door MPV 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 141hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 150hp engine designed by Toyota.

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 mpv segment, which is generally a 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, MPV offers a considerable difference of 11% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears 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 Mazda with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Toyota badge with 4.6 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed MPV as average reliability-wise, and Avensis Verso is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as MPV rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.6 out of 5.

Toyota is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 192 kilometers per hour, 12km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Avensis Verso, averaging around 8.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (33 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 17% difference compared to MPV.

Toyota 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, MPV offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with Toyota 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 Toyota. 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.