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 257hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 205hp engine designed by Honda.

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, Legend offers a considerable difference of 18% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Honda does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, 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.

Nissan is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.1 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 210 kilometers per hour, 5km/h less 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!

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 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 Nissan. 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.