I reviewed the MOST popular used car on Sun Motors right now, find out if you're eligible for it in 60 seconds
How can you pay for it? (Sun Motors Finance, obviously. More on that later…)
We can't answer any of these questions, but we can tell you what the UK's most popular car for sale on Sun Motors is.
It is, of course, the ever-reliable Nissan Qashqai.
When it was launched, this compact crossover SUV pretty much defined the category. It's nearly 20 years old but remains as popular as ever.
You used to need a lot of cash to get a Qashqai (see what I did there?), but we'll show you how Sun Motors Finance is making it easier for everyone to buy the right car at the best price.
I've driven the Nissan Qashqai and I'll give you my honest opinion of its good points, bad points, and anything else I can remember that's relevant.
What are the most popular used cars?
Sun Motors is a nationwide marketplace that connects thousands of buyers and dealers. We keep track of every purchase and can reveal our list of the 10 most popular used cars in the UK.
You already know that at the top of the charts is the Nissan Qashqai. Here's a list of the rest…
Nissan Qashqai
VW Golf
Mercedes A-Class
Mini (all models)
Kia Sportage
BMW 1 Series
Ford Kuga
BMW 3 Series
Audi A3
Hyundai Tucson
Buying a used car? Find cars for under £200 on Sun Motors here.
Nissan Qashqai used car review
The Nissan Qashqai may have a name that you'll struggle to spell, but its appeal isn't hard to spot.
It's a crossover SUV, which means it looks like a car that's capable of running off-road and has an elevated driving position, but in reality, it's a pretty refined and reliable city vehicle.
We're going to talk about the second-generation (and subsequent) models that launched in 2013.
With this version, Nissan ironed out all the faults and created the UK's favourite (sort of) SUV.
The Qashquai is now beloved by middle managers, school-run mums and dads, and anyone for whom a MINI was just a little bit too small.
Modern versions are bigger and look more aggressive, but, for our money, don't look as good.
7
The high-up driving position offers great visibility, and the responsive handling makes the car manoeuvrable enough to slide into that supermarket parking spot.
OK, so performance-wise it's not going to knock your socks off or make you smile too much, but it's a family car, so we never expected it would.
There have been far too many engine variations (including petrol, diesel, hybrid, and the latest e-POWER powertrain) for us to run through them all.
Reviewers seem to favour the 1.3-litre DIG-T 140 mild-hybrid petrol engine, and we won't argue.
Bad points are, as you'd expect, few and far between. The Qashqai is quite expensive as a used car, with other makes and models perhaps a little cheaper to buy, run and insure.
The Qashqai is, like lots of crossovers, a bit of a fake too. It's not really an off-roader like the Range Rover, but not many people need that sort of performance (or can afford the price).
How to check your eligibility for the Nissan Qashqai
7
What's helpful is that Sun Motors offers a quick budget check so you can see your realistic borrowing limit before you browse.
Start by using our "How much can I borrow?" tool to get an instant estimate of how much you can borrow.
Are Nissan Qashqais reliable?
The Nissan Qashqai isn't quite as reliable as the bullet-proof Nissan cars of old, with the 2014-21 diesel models in particular suffering from engine and exhaust problems.
Overall, though, it's a sturdy family motor that shouldn't leave you stranded by the roadside.
Try to buy one with a full service history, ensure all recalls have been completed, and verify receipts for any work done.
How much is a Nissan Qashqai?
Nissan Qashqais start from £5,000 for a 10-year old (2015) model with over 100,000 miles on the clock. Nearly new models, including the e-POWER version, can cost over £35,000.
As a ballpark, expect to pay around £15-17,000 for a 2020 Qashqai.
It's not the cheapest car on the market, with some used models as expensive as a new Dacia Duster, for example, but it'll hold its value.
Can I get finance for a Nissan Qashqai?
Finance is a great way to buy a used Nissan Qashqai. You can spread the cost over a set period with fixed monthly payments allowing you to budget effectively.
Understanding how much you can borrow before you start searching is vital, which is why Sun Motors Finance tool gives you the power. Add some details and you'll get an accurate indication of the amount you can borrow.
When you start searching, the intelligent functionality will only display Qashquais (and other cars) that you can afford to buy.
The search takes just 60 seconds and won't affect your credit rating. If you're successful, you can get full approval for a loan on the same day.
Sun Motors Finance is suitable for those who have been denied credit elsewhere. We work with several lenders who can offer finance packages to individuals who may have been previously refused credit.
Our advice is to check out how much you can borrow before shopping for your new car (whether it's a Qashqai, convertible, VW, or van).
Is Nissan Qashqai a 4x4?
The Nissan Qashqai isn't a true 4x4 like a Land Rover or Range Rover, for example, but you can find both front-wheel drive (FWD) and four-wheel drive (AWD) models on the market.
In off-road mode, the 4x4 Qashqai will tackle difficult terrain like mud and gravel, much more confidently than the 2WD version.
Most drivers who really need 4WD performance should look elsewhere. In the end, they probably already were.
Used Nissan Qashqais for sale
We've scoured Sun Motors to find three top used cars for sale. You'll need to get in quick to secure these…
Bargain basement: 2020 Nissan Qashqai Acenta Premium
7
CHECK ELIGIBILITY
This isn't the cheapest Nissan Qashqai on the market, but it's arguably one of the best-value used motors we've seen.
Don't let the 60,000+ miles on the clock put you off. This Acenta Premium model comes with 17' alloys, a good touchscreen, and parking sensors.
It'll do 55mpg all day long, too. That's why this is our bargain buy.
Awesome auto: Nissan Qashqai 1.5 E-Power Tekna
7
This nearly-new hybrid Qashquai is everything you want from a modern motor. The cool blue Qashqai is in Tekna trim, featuring cool 18-inch alloy wheels, a Bose sound system, and a head-up display. Nice.
High-class hybrid: Nissan Qashqai 1.5 h e-POWER Acenta Premium
7
The 2022 Qashqai is a thoroughly modern car. Its petrol/electric hybrid motor produces an impressive 188bhp.
It's quiet, quick, and has the mean look of the new Qashqai.
This particular car has 43,000 miles on the clock so it's ready to go for thousands more.
Buying a used car? Check out Sun Motors and find your next vehicle today. Whether you're looking for automatic, manual, or electric, use Sun Motors to decide on your next model.
Nissan Qashqai FAQs
How do I know if a dealer is trustworthy?
Buy a car through Sun Motors, basically. You'll find that all dealers advertising cars on Sun Motors are vetted and checked for quality and reputation.
You'll find over 18,000 cars for sale from the UK's best dealers.
Sun Motors also enables you to connect directly with dealers, allowing you to ask any questions you want before making a purchase.
How much can I borrow for car finance?
The amount of cash you can borrow depends on a range of factors, including your credit history, income, and the finance package (HP or PCP) that you choose.
7
What's helpful is that Sun Motors offers a quick budget check so you can see your realistic borrowing limit before you browse.
Start by using our "How much can I borrow?" tool to get an instant estimate of how much you can borrow.
What's the difference between PCP and HP car finance?
PCP (Personal Contract Purchase) costs less a month. At the end of the agreement, you can return the car or pay a lump sum to keep it.
HP (Hire Purchase), on the other hand, spreads the total cost over fixed payments, and you own the car outright once the agreement is complete.
The good news is that Sun Motors offers both options, so you can choose what works best for you.
Disclosure to be added to bottom of article: Motor Genius Group Ltd t/a Sun Motors is an Appointed Representative (FRN 960504) of The Compliance Guys Ltd who is authorised and regulated by the FCA (FRN 941360). We are a credit broker not a lender. We work with a select group of lenders and will receive commission. The full details of how the commission arrangements work will be provided before you proceed with any arrangement. Finance subject to status and income. Terms and Conditions apply. The advice we provide is not impartial due to our commercial relationships with lenders. ICO number [ZB640135]
Buying a used car? Check out Sun Motors and find your next vehicle today. Whether you're looking for automatic, manual or electric, use Sun Motors to decide on your next model.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Rachel Reeves needs wider headroom against fiscal rules, ex-Bank of England deputy says
The former Bank of England deputy governor Charlie Bean has urged Rachel Reeves to create much wider headroom against her fiscal rules – a decision likely to require significant tax rises or spending cuts. Bean suggested that the current slim margin of less than £10bn, had led the chancellor to 'fine-tune' the government's tax and spending plans to meet the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) forecasts five years ahead. 'Government spending is about one and a quarter trillion, so £10bn is a small number … and it is a small number in the context of typical forecasting errors,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He added: 'She should aim to operate with a larger margin of headroom, so previous chancellors have typically operated with headroom of the order of £30bn. 'Because she has chosen about a third of that … it is very easy for numbers to go in the wrong direction and she finds she has to neurotically fine-tune taxes to control the OBR forecast that is several years ahead.' Bean, who is also a former member of the OBR's budget responsibility committee, added: 'The original sin is that she should not have chosen to operate with such a tight margin of error.' Reeves increased taxes by a historic £40bn in her budget last October. However, with most of the proceeds earmarked for public services, she left herself on track to meet her strict fiscal rules with a relatively slim margin of £10bn. That 'headroom' was set to be wiped out before the spring statement in March, prompting the scramble for savings that led to the £5bn cuts to disability benefits, which Labour dropped this week after a backbench revolt. Reeves's team privately acknowledge that the small headroom of less than £10bn she left herself against the forecasts has contributed to the challenges of the past 12 months – but argue that she had little choice given the poor fiscal inheritance left by the Tories. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion The chancellor is widely expected to have to increase taxes in her autumn budget, to close the gap created by U-turns on disability benefits and the winter fuel allowance, and because of the prospect of weaker economic forecasts. She insisted she was 'cracking on with the job' on Thursday, after a tumultuous day on Wednesday in which bond markets dumped UK government debt amid speculation about the chancellor's future. Creating an additional £20bn of fiscal headroom, as Bean suggested, would require tax rises equivalent to 2p on the basic and higher rates of income tax.
The Independent
38 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘What must the world think?': Edinburgh airport slammed as ‘filthy' by Scottish quango chief
Edinburgh Airport is so 'filthy' it compromises Scotland 's international reputation, a leading Scottish chief executive has said. After a negative experience at Scotland's busiest airport, Francesca Osowska, chief executive of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), took to social media to express her disgust. 'Another top class performance by @EDI_Airport,' she began sarcastically. 'Arrivals hall is filthy, toilets dirty and despite the Porto flight arriving before the Dubai flight, guess which bags were delivered first? Another one hour + wait for bags.' The former triathlete, who was awarded an OBE for services to government and the Commonwealth Games in the Queen's New Year Honours in January 2015, added: ''Where Scotland meets the world'. What must the world think?' she finished. A second X user agreed with Ms Osowska's comments, writing: 'The Arrivals Hall at EDI is an embarrassment. 'Filthy, industrial, uninviting, soulless, chaotic, impersonal. I could not agree more. Please don't ask me about the road link in or the £5 drop off charge!!' And a third added: 'And the trek to passport control and the lengthy queues there add to the terrible experience for international arrivals. A national embarrassment.' Baggage handling and other ground services are outsourced to contractors who work with airlines and are not provided by the airport. In response to the comments, a spokesperson for Edinburgh Airport told The Times: 'Constructive feedback is important. We survey more than 50,000 of our passengers every month, and those scores are overwhelmingly positive. 'But, as with any business or organisation – including ones in the public sector like the Scottish Funding Council – we know we won't always get it right. 'The complex nature and range of partners involved in airport operations are often misunderstood. While it's easy to share personal frustrations in 240 characters, it's not as easy to explain those intricacies. 'We're happy to engage constructively and offer clarity wherever we can.' The Independent has reached out to Edinburgh Airport for comment. Ms Osowska's comments come just days after a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) report named Edinburgh Airport as 'needing improvement' in the accessibility assistance offered to passengers with reduced mobility (PRM). The transport hub was marked down for failing to meet 'the standards for the provision of assistance in a timely manner'. The CAA said this was 'primarily due to operational issues caused by a change of contractor for its service provider earlier in the year'. A spokesperson for Edinburgh Airport said: 'As the CAA's report states, this rating was given to the airport during a particularly challenging time for our PRM operation, due to a change of provider, staff shortages, and a surge in demand for the service. 'Our goal remains to return to and maintain a 'good' or 'very good' rating.'
Telegraph
38 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Inside the civil war in English Heritage which has brought its chief down
With its rich red Georgian façade, the exquisite Ranger's House on the edge of Greenwich Park provides the perfect backdrop to the raunchy Regency hit Bridgerton. Once the home to Princess Augusta, the sister of George III, it has played host to royal balls, drama and Machiavellian intrigue, long before Netflix. Vice admiral Francis Hosier, its original owner, dropped dead of yellow fever in 1727 on a disastrous expedition to Panama along with thousands of his sailors. But now its current owner, English Heritage, has also lost its high command after chief executive, Nick Merriman, stepped down after little more than a year. A statement said that this was for 'personal reasons', but that has not stopped the rumour mill speculating that financial pressures had also played their part. Beset by cost-cutting, redundancies and an air of quiet mutiny among its staff, English Heritage has been warned by experts and insiders that its days could be numbered. This comes in the wake of English Heritage announcing earlier this year they are planning around 189 redundancies from a workforce of 2,535, which represents a cut of 7 per cent. The charity also announced cuts to winter opening hours at a series of sites, with an additional 22 sites to become 'hidden gems', with limited openings. Included in this category was Ranger's House, which was previously open five days a week, but has been reduced to opening on Thursdays and Saturdays only because of 'low visitor numbers'. The air of unfolding crisis around the organisation has been reinforced by the fact that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee launched a new inquiry in December. Titled: 'Protecting built heritage: New inquiry to examine how to safeguard historic buildings and attractions', it held hearings, with experts giving evidence, last month. Within the redundancies, according to sources, have been a number of senior historians who have helped to bolster its reputation, infuriating both loyal staff and union officials. Potential strike action has been mooted as an option. 'There is a lot of bitterness remaining around the restructure,' a senior union source tells The Telegraph. 'As with all restructures, it leaves everyone who keeps their job in a really miserable position where they have lost colleagues and have to do the same amount of work.' For the nation, and English Heritage's 1.2 million members, this is no minor matter, because it manages over 400 of England's historic and often iconic monuments. These include Stonehenge, sections of Hadrian's Wall, Tintagel Castle and Dover Castle, where Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk, was coordinated. The last of these, along with Eltham Palace, and the Jacobean splendour of Audley End House, have also all featured in the TV series The Crown. On the face of it, things might look pretty rosy. A total of 6.1 million people visited English Heritage properties in 2023-24, a 12 per cent rise on the previous year, though down on the last pre-Covid year, 2018-19, when visitor numbers hit 6.3 million. Examining the numbers that really matter, it becomes clear why English Heritage is in such trouble. Although income for 2023-24 was £141 million, up from £130 million the previous year, expenditure was £155 million, leaving a deficit of nearly £14 million. This means that English Heritage's cash reserves are tumbling at an alarming rate, having fallen from £64 million to £50 million in just a year. At this rate, English Heritage could run out of money in as little as three to four years. On one level, none of this would matter if the taxpayer was still footing the bill, but English Heritage has been effectively left to fend for itself. Set up in 1983, English Heritage was a quango designed to take care of and protect the nation's heritage. But in 2015, under the Cameron government's 'bonfire of the quangos', the organisation was split into two. Historic England inherited the statutory and protection functions, which included advising the Government and planning authorities, while English Heritage became a charity managing the properties. The Government handed over an £80 million lump sum in order to secure its immediate financial future. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) cut off all annual funding in 2021-22. ' My understanding is that DCMS have sort of washed their hands of English Heritage, and English Heritage are trying to re-engage with them,' the union source tells The Telegraph. 'I worry that we are entering this kind of death spiral where cuts mean people are miserable, that they cannot do the work they are meant to, which means there is less ability to make money, and it just spirals down.' He says he is inclined to believe that Merriman did leave due to personal circumstances, but goes on: 'For me, the bigger problem for English Heritage is they have no money, and I don't really see that are ever going to be in a position to make money, because their sites are just not profitable in the way National Trust's are.' Susan Greaney, an archaeology lecturer at the University of Exeter, who worked at English Heritage for 17 years and has been outspoken about the organisation's problems, believes the writing was on the wall from the start. 'This is a long-term problem, in that English Heritage was split on the basis that the historic properties could stand on their own feet, with some investment,' she says. 'At the time this split happened, most of us were very sceptical that this would work. There was a feeling that they were kind of getting rid of civil servants off the payroll at the expense of everything else. Ironically, it worked relatively well during Covid because all the sites were closed, staff [were] furloughed, and immediately afterwards everyone holidayed in the UK. 'But since then there has been poor weather at key holiday periods. This just shows what a knife's edge the financial situation is, because all it takes is one poor season and the organisation has to look at major redundancies.' Greaney, who still has close friends working for the organisation, continues: 'It suggests that they probably haven't built up the kind of reserves, and with it a sustainable financial situation, to have a buffer for the bad years. For me this suggests that the underlying premise that this was going to be a sustainable organisation, just wasn't ever going to work. 'If you look at the National Museums, particularly in London, and the funding they are able to get and raise, to still be free, and then compare them to English Heritage's sites, where most of them are ruins, most of them very difficult to maintain, and most do not make money.' The union source adds: 'We see this right across the whole heritage and museum sector, where people are treated like a doormat because they love their job. English Heritage is the custodian of the national collection, but I just don't seen how the financial model is long term sustainable. 'They have made attempts to get philanthropy income, but that tends to be site specific. As you might expect, Kenwood House [in Hampstead, north London] attracts wealthy individuals, but some of the other sites don't.' Strike action is 'absolutely a possibility', he says. 'I think it depends on where things go.' In its response, English Heritage points to increased membership, visitor numbers and income since 2015. They say that the £14 million deficit in 2023-24 was a 'planned reduction', underwritten with a government loan of £23.4 million in 2021. A spokesman pointed to the ongoing impact of Covid on international visitors, inflation, the National Insurance contribution impact, and wider problems for the culture sector. 'There is no doubt that these are challenging times for organisations like ours, but following our restructure, the charity is in a much stronger position,' says Matt Thompson, the English Heritage's conservation, curatorial and learning director. 'We care for these great places on behalf of the nation, and in order to do that we rely on our visitors, our members, and our donors – we are extremely grateful for all their support, both now and in the future.' But for Greaney, the future of the nation's rich heritage is reaching a point of no return, and it represents yet another financial headache for the embattled Labour government. 'For me, the only solution is really for English Heritage to be taken back in by the nation, and renationalised,' she argues. 'It is just not something that can really make a profit, because the cost of maintaining this infrastructure is enormous. 'This is cultural infrastructure and the heritage of this country, and it is what people come for in terms of tourism and leisure time. It is a significant loss to lose such a lot of staff and expertise from the organisation. There is a slight cycle of decline that you get into if you close more sites, you get less people, and less membership, and I am not sure what the long-term future is. 'These are state properties, and they are not things that you can just dismiss or neglect. They are going to have to come up with a solution.'
