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 large family car segment and utilize the same 5-door wagon body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Renault-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 194hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 8-valves 147hp engine designed by Peugeot.

Both vehicles got tested by European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), with the Renault 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 large family car segment, which is generally a good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, Laguna offers a marginal difference of 3% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Renault does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Renault, as well as Citroen, with the same average rating of 4.1 out of 5. Independent research findings rank Laguna as average reliability-wise, and Xantia is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as Laguna rank it on average as 3.5, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Renault is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 2.9 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 225 kilometers per hour, 20km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Xantia, averaging around 10.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (28 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 11% difference compared to Laguna.

Renault 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, Laguna offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. It all continues in the same direction, with Renault being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. It does come at a cost though, and that's the fuel consumption... No mistake, whatever you decide here, but I'd still go for the Renault. 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 more than 12.000 different ones in our database.