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 small family car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan 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 Lada-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 98hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 103hp engine designed by FIAT.

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. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the small family 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. Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the Russian car offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that FIAT does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Lada, as well as FIAT, with the same average rating of 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Priora as average reliability-wise, and Albea is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Russian car rank it on average as 4.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.2 out of 5.

FIAT is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.7 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 180 kilometers per hour, 3km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the Russian car, averaging around 6.3 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (45 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 32% difference compared to the Italian car!

Lada 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 Russian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with FIAT offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Lada. 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™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.