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 petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Rover-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 16-valves 185hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 24-valves 272hp 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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. 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, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the British car offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem 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 4.4 out of 5. The same official information place 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 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Mercedes Benz is way more agile, reaching 100km/h in 3.3 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 210 kilometers per hour, 40km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 13.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (20 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 19% difference compared to the British car!

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. 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 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. I suggest you spend two more minutes in order to find out which car, based on your needs and budget, would be picked by the virtual adviser™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.