car financing, used vs new (advice wanted)

[West]

My old car is headed to the graveyard, and this time I am going to take on a car payment, which I have actually never had before. I'm under pressure to get things done sooner rather than later (presume I am renting a car while I am carless), and yet the time I have to look is somewhat limited by work at the moment.

I'm currently reading carbuyingtips.com for advice. I've got my credit report, which is decent (FICO 685).

The only option I've really looked at so far is a 2001 Honda Accord LX 2dr coupe with V6, 80000 miles, price $11,500, possibly a bit less. Drove this morning, like it, not sure what financing I could get yet, I didn't have time this morning to get into that with them yet, though I asked them about it. They are a small dealer who doesn't directly handle the financing, but they apparently have banking partners who can handle financing. I went to my bank close by to ask about a car loan, without my credit report info yet, and was quoted 12.6%, which I told them I was sure I could do much better. They pretty much acknowledged as much without debate.

Carbuyingtips.com recommends applying for a loan online, either from E-LOAN or Capital One. Haven't applied yet, but presumably if your credit score is >680 I think, can get 6.something for a used car loan to buy from a dealer, and less than 6% for a new car. Been told by a friend that the problem with the online Capital One loan is that they may send me a "voucher" to buy the car with, and some dealers don't like that because it means they have to get the money from Capital One.

The guy at my bank also suggested that if my credit rating is good, getting 0% financing on a new car might not be that hard. So that got me to thinking that I might be better off spending a bit more than I would on say the Accord I was looking at if I could get some great deal on financing (as it would work out to costing me something similar in the end). Called a Honda dealer though and they said that there is currently no 0% financing deals from Honda, though there was 2 months ago. Did read some testimonials on some website, and it seemed like Honda buyers often got very low financing rates recently through Honda.

So ultimately I'm trying to figure out with a minimum of hassle what is likely to be my best bet, say, buying that Accord I was looking at (or something similar), or trying to get say a new Civic. Am I likely to be able to get a much better rate on a new Civic as compared to the used Accord, thus making the actual cost comparable? How difficult is it normally to get reasonable financing for a used car purchase?

My other debate is if overall cost turned out to be similar (due to differences in financing I could get), which would I rather buy, the Accord with 80,000 miles, or a new Civic VP, for example. Are there other non Honda options that I might be interested in (keeping in mind that reliability is very important to me - I don't want something that I can count on being in and out of a shop).