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 2-door cabriolet body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (rear for the Mercedes Benz and 4 x 4 in the case of the Porsche). The first one has a Mercedes Benz-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 571hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 520hp 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, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. On the other hand, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, 911 offers a marginal difference of 2% 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, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Mercedes Benz with an average rating of 4.4, and models under the Porsche badge with 3.8 out of 5. Independent research findings rank SLS as average reliability-wise, and 911 is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as SLS rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Porsche is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.3 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 315 kilometers per hour, 2km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be 911, averaging around 9.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (29 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 33% difference compared to SLS!

Mercedes Benz is apparently more reliable, not too much, but just enough. 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, 911 offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Porsche offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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 Porsche. Anyway, that's the most objective conclusion I could've came up with and it's based solely on the information found on this website. Aspects such as design, practicality, brand value and driving experience are there for you to measure them out. 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.