Thanks for all your replies.

We are planning to make the purchase sometime in July 2004 when we move down to singapore. We feel that from all your replies, the following cars will make our list. Hopefully we can cut down the list (with all your suggestions) and make the final choice.
The current list is:
1. Sunny - it's a bit mature for our taste but the interior is impressive and seems to have good resale value. Considering this quite seriously. No.1 choice in terms of pricing but No.3 choice in terms of looks.
2. Altis - interior not impressive. Body looks flimsy. Good resale value. But still prefer Sunny above the Altis
3. Civic - a bit pricy. No idea about resale value. But looks like a good car.
4. Focus - looks cool for our taste. Only concern is resale value.
5. Mazda 3 - our No.1 choice. Only thing holding us back is the price and resale value.
6. Lancer - Cool looking, competitively prices and is probably our 2nd choice. Wonder how is the resale value.
I think at the moment our main concern would be the resale value. From what we see, we guess the depreciation for a Sunny & ALtis is about S$6k-7k per year (if you sell the car after 2-3 years). How about the other cars?
It will be also nice to hear your experiences with the above cars (i.e. in terms of performance, cost of maintainance, resale value and quality of the electronics). Thanks!!