Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol engines and utilizing the 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the Lexus and front in the case of the Chrysler). The first one has a Toyota-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 220hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 203hp engine designed by Chrysler.

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 luxury car 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 Japanese car offers a marginal difference of 6% more metal.

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Lexus is significantly less fault-prone, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Lexus with an average rating of 4.9, and models under the Chrysler badge with 4.4 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the Japanese car rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Lexus is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.8 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 230 kilometers per hour, 20km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the American car, averaging around 10.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (27 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 10% difference compared to the Japanese car.

Lexus 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 slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Lexus being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. 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.