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 4-cylinder, 16-valves 184hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 265hp 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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. 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, SLK offers a marginal difference of 1% 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. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Mercedes Benz with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Porsche badge with 3.7 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 SLK rank it on average as 4.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Porsche is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.5 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 264 kilometers per hour, 24km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be SLK, averaging around 6.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (44 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 31% difference compared to Boxster!

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, SLK offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Porsche being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... 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™, among thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.