Overview

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 front in the case of the Audi). 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 265hp engine designed by Volkswagen.

Safety

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. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, but that fact doesn't break the tie between the two cars. On the other hand, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the German car offers a marginal difference of 5% more metal.

Reliability

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Nissan as a brand displays somewhat better results, 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 Audi badge with 4.2 out of 5. Independent research findings rank 350Z 22% above average, and A5 Coupe 72% below the first one. We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the Japanese car rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Performance & Fuel economy

Nissan is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.6 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 250 kilometers per hour, 4km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy an obvious choice would be the German car, averaging around 8.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (33 mpg), in combined cycle. That's 40% difference compared to the Japanese car!

Verdict

Nissan definitely wins the reliability competition, everything taken into consideration. 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 offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Nissan being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. 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 Audi. 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.