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 small family car segment and utilize the same 3-door hatchback body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific diesel engine choice they offer. The first one has a FIAT-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 90hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 90hp engine designed by Toyota.

A starting point here would be to take a look at the results from European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) tests which were performed on both of the cars, with the Opel being a slightly better choice apparently. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the small family car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the German car offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that Toyota does have a slight advantage, all the models observed together. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Opel with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Toyota badge with 4.6 out of 5. The same official information place Astra as average reliability-wise, and Corolla is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 4.1, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.8 out of 5.

Toyota is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.3 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 180 kilometers per hour, 6km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 4.8 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (59 mpg), in combined cycle.

Toyota 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 offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with Toyota being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. 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.