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Virtual Adviser's™ opinion
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 luxury car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Nissan-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 225hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 205hp engine designed by Honda.
SafetyUnfortunatelly, 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, 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, Legend offers a considerable difference of 15% more metal.
ReliabilityI don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Honda does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Nissan with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Honda badge with 4.7 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 Maxima rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.
Performance & Fuel economyNissan is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 230 kilometers per hour, 15km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be Maxima, averaging around 9.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (30 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 28% difference compared to Legend!
Verdict
Honda 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, Legend offers significantly better overall protection, taking the lead here. From there things take a different direction, with Nissan offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's not difficult to say then that if I'd need to make a choice, it would definitely be the Nissan. 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.