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 Land Rover-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 5-cylinder, 10-valves 137hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 5-cylinder, 10-valves 163hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

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? Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the British car offers a marginal difference of 5% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Mercedes Benz does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Land Rover with an average rating of 3.8, and models under the Mercedes Benz badge with 4.3 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Discovery as average reliability-wise, and ML is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the British car rank it on average as 3.3, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.9 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is way more agile, reaching 100km/h in 3.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 185 kilometers per hour, 28km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 9.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (30 mpg), in combined cycle.

Mercedes Benz 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 British car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Mercedes Benz outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Mercedes Benz. 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.