im guessing you were looking at the coupe in both Civic and Accord, personally I wouldn’t buy a coupe in the Accord because its priced higher for some reason that I don’t understand, if I was looking for a good economical comfortable car I would buy the Accord Special Edition MSRP is $21,625 and if your stubborn about it I’d say you could prolly get one out the door for under 20k and if you get lucky and can find an 07 at the end of the year you may even get a better deal since there are supposed to be changing the accord
Also one thing is that the Accord has a 5 spd auto tranny and its very nice.
I looked up the Mazda3 5 door like you mentioned you liked above and MSRP is $19,225 for the base model. its almost $2,500 difference. Its all up to you in the end. The Accord is a nice car though. I haven’t had the chance to drive a Mazda3 so I can’t compare performance.