Overview

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 3-door coupe 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 Hyundai-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 145hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 165hp engine designed by Alfa Romeo.

Safety

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, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Italian car offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.

Reliability

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Hyundai is significantly less fault-prone, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Hyundai with an average rating of 4.5, and models under the Alfa Romeo badge with 4.2 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed Coupe as average reliability-wise, and GT is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Korean car rank it on average as 4.7, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.3 out of 5.

Performance & Fuel economy

Alfa Romeo is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 216 kilometers per hour, 8km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Korean car, averaging around 8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (35 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 9% difference compared to the Italian car.

Verdict

Hyundai 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, the Italian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Alfa Romeo being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... I believe that, when we take all into account, we have only one winner here - the Hyundai. 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. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.