[VaSteve]

To follow up.... I drove the Freestyle over the last weekend. The one I drove had the CVT transmission (one sales guy told me I could get an auto, but it doesn't appear to be the case).

My impression: The layout is good, lots of space for passengers and stuff. The fold down seats are cool and it appeared very vesatile. I couldn't get a great seating position, but I found one that was OK, sits a little lower than my Cherokee. It was a little bigger on the outside (at least felt it) than my Cherokee.

Performance: Lousy. The CVT is dog slow. I really stomped it to the floor to see what it would do. With the CVT you never feel any shifts like a normal automatic so you never can instinctively know when you're at 60 mph. When you really step on the gas, the engine was really noisy.

I'm not really in the market, so I will keep an eye on this for a few years to see if they sub in a real auto trans. Until then, I would skip it.