Overview

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 luxury car segment and utilize the same 5-door hatchback body style and the 4 x 4 wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Volkswagen-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 252hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 306hp engine designed by BMW.

Safety

The fact that the BMW got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, puts it sky-high safety-wise, in my eyes at least. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it?

Reliability

I don't like generalizing things when it comes to reliability, although it does seem that both brands display similar results in faults and breakdowns, when all the models are taken into account. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Audi with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the BMW badge with 4.1 out of 5. The same official information place A7 as average reliability-wise, and 5 Series is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as Audi A7 rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.0 out of 5.

Performance & Fuel economy

There's not enough data for me to elaborate on the subject, I'm affraid.

Verdict

Audi 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, 5 Series beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. When it comes to performance, both vehicles provide similar experience, so I wouldn't point any of them out. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but BMW. Nevertheless, let's not forget that people have different preferences and needs, so what really counts is your personal feel. I'm only here to help. 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 more than 12.000 different ones in our database.