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 (front for the Opel and rear in the case of the FIAT). The first one has a Opel-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 200hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 170hp engine designed by FIAT.

The fact that the FIAT got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, offers a slight advantage, as the 4-star rating is better than none. 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 it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, if we'd like to consider vehicle mass in this context too, which we definitely should, the German car offers a self-explainatory difference of 54% more metal.

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that FIAT does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Opel with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the FIAT badge with 4.3 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as the German car rank it on average as 4.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.8 out of 5.

FIAT is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.4 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 232 kilometers per hour, 3km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 6.6 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (43 mpg), in combined cycle.

FIAT 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 this case though, it seems that both cars show similar levels of passenger protection all together, so that won't break a tie. But one thing that actually could is the performance, with FIAT being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's not difficult to say then that if I'd need to make a choice, it would definitely be the FIAT. 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.