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 sports car segment and utilize the same 2-door cabriolet body style and the rear wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Mercedes Benz-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 18-valves 224hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 252hp engine designed by Porsche.

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 sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, CLK offers a considerable difference of 16% 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, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Mercedes Benz with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Porsche badge with 3.9 out of 5. Independent research findings rank CLK as average reliability-wise, and Boxster is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as CLK rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 2.0 out of 5.

Porsche is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.4 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 260 kilometers per hour, 24km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 10.8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (26 mpg), in combined cycle.

Mercedes Benz definitely wins the reliability competition, everything taken into consideration. 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, CLK offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with Porsche outracing its opponent in any situation possible, making it better choice for boy racers. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! No mistake, whatever you decide here, but I'd still go for the Porsche. 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 thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.