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 suv segment and utilize the same 5-door suv body style and the 4 x 4 wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific diesel engine choice they offer. The first one has a Hyundai-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 163hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 158hp engine designed by Nissan.

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 suv segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? On the other hand, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Japanese car offers a considerable difference of 20% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, all the models observed together. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Hyundai with an average rating of 4.5, and models under the Nissan badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Terracan as average reliability-wise, and Patrol is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the Korean car rank it on average as 4.9, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Hyundai is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.2 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 168 kilometers per hour, 8km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the Korean car, averaging around 8.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (32 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 24% difference compared to the Japanese car!

Nissan 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 Japanese car offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with Hyundai 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 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. 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 thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.