Thanks for all the recommendations. I did check each one out. Ultimately, I got more and more confused, so we went to check a couple of "in the flesh".
My absolutely "must have" was a 5 star safety rating and full quota of airbags.
I think I could have fallen in love with 15 different cars if I found 15 that fit our requirements. The first one I saw was a Mitsubishi Outlander, base model. The same yard had an Aspire which was the model with everything that opens and shuts, heated leather seats, reversing camera, rain sensing wipers, dusk sensing headlights, climate controlled zoned air-con, sat-nav, sunroof, but it was 4x4.
We don't need 4x4, could do without sat-nav (though a "nice have"), don't need 7 seats any more, but it was hard to go back to the base model after seeing the high spec one.
I then looked at different ones recommended here to see how they compared in safety, inclusions and price compared to the one we'd seen.
We ended up finding the model above the base model, and it had the "must have" items, (7 airbags, curtain airbags), plus everything the top of the range model had except no leather, no heated seats, no sunroof, no 4 x 4.
Those things are not important to us, though I like the idea of leather and could upgrade to get it, but we are not going to. (We would if it was a "must have".)
The car was demo price due to being hail damaged. I would challenge anybody to find the hail damage. There are three tiny marks (little dents smaller than a pinhead) and I cannot believe we are saving thousands on it because of something I would not have noticed had I not been shown.
So, we've ended up with bells and whistles car for a base model price. I'm happy and cannot wait to pick it up. I'm not terribly impressed by cars, but it is exciting to be getting a new one.
We are changing over for $30K (our car got us just over $1K in the wash up) but that includes tinting of front windows (all other glass except windscreen is privacy glass) and fitted tow bar.
