Get a used Mazda 3. It's not quite up to par with the cars you mentioned, but they're good for a daily driver and have REALLY good steering for being a FWD commuter car.

 

Go test drive the new Subaru Impreza.

 

BMW 3 series. especially the E90 (2006-10) Ive owned an e30,e36,e46, and e90 and the e90 is by far the most comfortable and reliably daily driver IMO. you can pick up a nice 328i for under 8k and maintenance is fairly cheap, so are parts since most all e90's share most of the same parts. as long as you keep it up the engine is amazing and will run for many miles, and the gas mileage is wonderful. My family has 4 of them and we've had them all for over 3 years and not one has had a single issue. 2 of them have close to 200k miles and still run remarkably.

 

If you keep on top of it and do you own work. Otherwise, I am wary of euro luxury brands.

 

/thread

 

2010+ LX civic, cheap and good with gas, its what i choose,