http://www.fastestlaps.com/cars/ford_mondeo_st220.html That's quite a cool site. I think the ST220 was measured at 6.8 thought not 7.0.
Yes, I know, that makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE TO ITS PERFORMANCE
It's not great off the line but once up to speed and when you wind the revs up, the V6 hauls it along nicely and makes a wonderful noise. 0-60 isn't the whole story, not by a long margin. I'm sure it'd be a fair bit slower if it couldn't do ~65 in 2nd.
I would probably go for the Civic ahead of the Megane, but I haven't driven the Megane. The Civic has lovely throttle response and I'm quite a fan of nice N/A engines, and the power delivery. It's quite a rush nailing a car up to daft RPM as the power continues to swell the whole way up