Ironic
Ironically it was the CVT tranny that i couldnt get comfortable with and lack of manual transmission that led me to look else where. I probably would be in one today if they rolled out the manual transmission with out having to special order one.
As far as the escape transmission goes if you sell a million of a type of car/truck/suv its gonna have gremlins but if you sell that many your also proven; and there will failures with certain things in each model no matter what - 2007 escapes had 4 wheel disc brakes but they switched back to disc/drums due probably to the 4 wheel disc setup having some problems too. I was also concerned with buying a complete new model with unknown issues but not overly so.
I hope the CVT2 proves to be a solid transmission for the compass/patriot/caliber my main beef with it was the noise of the higher rpm it used. I know this is where the power band it and its doing the right thing - I just couldn't get past it.
As far as price goes the msrp of the 08 escape is quite a bit cheaper then the 2007 models they are replacing. Also financing at the jeep dealer is awful. The sales man said to not even bother with it - probably hoping i would bite on a liberty

. This made the lower finaning with ford seem like a bargain. I saved 4 grand in financing but paid 3000 more for the ford compared to the jeep..hmm i can live with that

(payments amounts per month work out nearly identical.) I hate overpaying on interest. Hopefully in the coming months jeep canada can lower this from 6.8 thats just awful.
I took some pics for another board:
http://fofhl.no-ip.info/Menu/escape.html
page is just 6 pics on my server