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 sports car segment and utilize the same 2-door coupe body style and the rear 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 160hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 184hp engine designed by BMW.

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. On the other hand, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the German car offers a considerable difference of 26% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Mazda as a brand displays somewhat better results, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Mazda with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the BMW badge with 4.2 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Japanese car rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.5 out of 5.

BMW is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 235 kilometers per hour, 18km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the German car, averaging around 6.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (46 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 25% difference compared to the Japanese car.

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, the German car offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. It all continues in the same direction, with BMW 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 BMW. Anyway, that's the most objective conclusion I could've came up with and it's based solely on the information found on this website. Aspects such as design, practicality, brand value and driving experience are there for you to measure them out. 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.