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 coupe body style within the same 'Sports car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Nissan and rear in the case of the Mercedes Benz). The first one has a Nissan-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 485hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 8-cylinder, 32-valves 571hp engine designed by Mercedes Benz.

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 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. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the Japanese car offers a marginal difference of 9% more metal.

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 Mercedes Benz badge with 4.4 out of 5. The same official information place GT-R as average reliability-wise, and SLS is more or less at the same level.That apart, owners of different cars powered by the same engine as the Japanese car rank it on average as 3.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 5.0 out of 5.

Nissan is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.3 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 310 kilometers per hour, 7km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be the Japanese car, averaging around 12.4 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (23 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 6% difference compared to the German car.

Mercedes Benz 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 Japanese car offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Nissan offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. 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. 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.