Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by diesel 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 Mercedes Benz and front in the case of the Lancia). The first one has a Mercedes Benz-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 224hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 5-cylinder, 20-valves 185hp 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 luxury car 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, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Italian 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 Lancia does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Mercedes Benz with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Lancia badge with 4.1 out of 5. Independent research findings rank CLS as average reliability-wise, and Thesis is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 4.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Mercedes Benz is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.7 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 246 kilometers per hour, 24km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the German car, averaging around 7.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (37 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 16% difference compared to the Italian 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 Italian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Mercedes Benz 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 Mercedes Benz. Nevertheless, let's not forget that people have different preferences and needs, so what really counts is your personal feel. I'm only here to help. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.