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 Nissan and 4 x 4 in the case of the Alfa Romeo). The first one has a Nissan-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 300hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 260hp engine designed by Alfa Romeo.

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, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, the Italian car offers a marginal difference of 2% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Nissan is significantly less fault-prone, 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 Alfa Romeo badge with 4.2 out of 5. The same official information place 350Z as average reliability-wise, and Brera is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Japanese car rank it on average as 5.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

Nissan is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.7 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 10km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 11.8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (24 mpg), in combined cycle.

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 Italian car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Nissan offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Alfa Romeo. 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™, among thousands of similar, yet so different vehicles.