Rent Nissan Kicks 2024 in Dubai

We deliver the Nissan Kicks 2024 to wherever you are in Dubai, usually inside one to two hours of the booking going through, and there is a no-deposit option if you would rather not have a few thousand dirhams frozen on a card all week. Debit cards and cash both work at handover, and we rent it from 18 when most desks in the city hold out until you turn 21. The argument on the rest of this page is a narrow one. The Kicks earns its rate on size and everyday manners in the city, not on anything it does when the road opens up.

It parks like a hatchback, and that is most of the point

At 4,295 mm long and 1,760 mm wide, the Kicks is shorter than a mid-size sedan and narrower than most of what will be sitting either side of you. Width is the number that decides your day here. In the lower basements of the older malls, and in the resident bays under the towers, the lines were painted for slimmer cars, and 1,760 mm leaves you room to open a door properly instead of shuffling out sideways.

Everything else about the shape helps too. The bonnet is short and you can see where it ends, the glass is upright, and the seat is high enough to look over the car in front without losing sight of the near-side kerb. Reversing into a tight slot is one movement rather than three. The 2,620 mm wheelbase keeps the turning circle small, which matters on the Dubai road layout that makes you drive past your destination and come back at the next opening.

Ground clearance is 178 mm. That covers the tall humps in the villa communities and the steep lip where a mall ramp meets the level floor, both of which will scrape a low sedan at anything above crawling pace. Read nothing more into it than that. The Kicks drives its front wheels only, on road tyres, so it is a raised road car. Soft sand will beach it, and recovering a stuck rental costs a good deal more than the week you booked.

Specification summary

Sheikh Zayed Road asks you to plan ahead

The 1.6 makes 118 hp and 149 Nm, and it sends that through a CVT to the front wheels. Getting up to 100 or 120 from a slip road is untroubled, and once you are there the car sits at the limit quietly enough for a daily commute. The moment it asks something of you is the overtake. There is no turbo waiting underneath, so the CVT raises the revs and holds them while the car gathers speed, and the whole move takes a couple of seconds longer than you expect. Leave the gap, commit early, and it is a non-issue. Improvise in the fast lane and it will feel underdone.

Fuel is the quiet compensation. Nissan quotes 15.4 km/l, real Dubai driving with the AC working lands nearer 11 to 12, and the 41-litre tank still covers a normal week of commuting and one airport run on a single fill. Our rate includes 300 km a day, then AED 0.5 for each kilometre beyond that, which is more headroom than most renters get anywhere near using.

Two costs travel with the driver rather than with us. Salik posts to your account each time you pass a gantry, and any RTA fine issued during the rental comes to you. Belts are required in every seat, and children under four need a proper child seat, which we fit before delivery if you tell us in advance.

One clarification while the specs are on the table. Nissan sells a hybrid Kicks called e-POWER in parts of Asia, and it has never been offered here. The car we hand over in Dubai is the petrol 1.6.

The first three minutes back in the car in July

Nothing parked outdoors in a Dubai August escapes physics, and the Kicks bakes like everything else. What it has going for it is a small cabin, so the air conditioning has less volume to fight. Fan to maximum, drop the front windows for the first half minute while you pull out, and you push the worst of the trapped air out of the car instead of asking the system to chill it. From there it becomes comfortable quickly, and the front vents are strong for a car at this price.

The glass area is generous for the footprint, which is good for placing the car in a car park and bad for a cabin left in the sun. If you have a choice of floors, the covered one is worth the walk, and a windscreen shade keeps the wheel and the top of the dash touchable. Nobody in this class gets rear-seat climate comfort worth the name, so if you are running passengers behind you on a hot afternoon, set the system to recirculate and angle the front vents backwards. That is where the cold air actually comes from.

Who should book it, and who should size up

Book the Kicks 2024 if your Dubai week is mostly city work: the commute, mall car parks, school runs, a couple of airport pickups, the odd weekend drive. It is one of the least demanding cars we hand over, it goes into bays that make bigger crossovers reverse twice, and it costs very little to run. For one or two people who want a raised seat without a big car underneath it, this is the sensible pick, and the MG ZS is the only thing in the class we would put next to it.

Size up if the E11 is your main road and you want overtakes to happen the instant you ask. A turbocharged crossover is worth the small step in rate for that alone. Same answer if you regularly carry four adults with full luggage, where a mid-size crossover or a sedan will stop the compromise before it starts.