ULEV 4-cyl is F23A4 (148hp) and non-ULEV is F23A1 (152hp). I bought my 2002 EX manual ULEV coupe in July and I absolutely love it. It's plenty fast for me and gets insane gas mileage (36 highway!) I don't know if the auto transmission thing applies to the 2002 but I know a guy at work who has two older accords (98 and 2000) and both of the automatics have died at 100K. If you like to drive a manual transmission I would definitely go for it, if nothing else because it's more fun than an automatic.

I think the best advice I can give you is to decide what you really want in a car and hold out for the right one! Don't try to sell yourself on one that's almost but not quite perfect. They made something like 400,000 accords per year so yours has to be out there!