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 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (front for the Nissan and rear in the case of the Opel). 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 218hp engine designed by Opel.

The fact that the Opel got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, isn't really an advantage, taken the poor 3-star rating it received. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. On the other hand, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the German car offers a considerable difference of 10% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Nissan does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Nissan with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Opel badge with 4.2 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Japanese car rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Nissan is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.5 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 210 kilometers per hour, 30km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the Japanese car, averaging around 9.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (30 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 24% difference compared to the German car!

Nissan 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, the German car beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. 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. 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. 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 more than 12.000 different ones in our database.