I agree with the two posts above. I was researching cars for a full year before I bought my MO, and one of the major reasons that I made the decision I did was because of the relatively few major problems that people had reported.
I was on all the forums for the vehicles I was considering, and the people here were complaining about rattles in the doors with an occasional complaint about the alternator going out under warantee or the CVT failing really early on and also being replaced under warrantee.
On the other car forums, they were complaining about MAJOR issues, and more frequently. Like motor mounts coming off, transmission failing 5-6 times within the first couple years, major engine failures that required their car to be in the shop for several weeks at a time, etc.
ANY car model will have a couple bad apples in the bunch. That's just life. Even the Prius, which is the car ranked highest for customer satisfaction right now (according to Consumer Reports) has had a few issues with individual owners. You can't avoid that completely. But I think that the main problems with the MO are MINOR in comparison to most. Getting so concerned about ONE report like this is over-reacting in my opinion.
Now, that said, $6k to replace the transmission really sucks, and I feel very bad for Randy. I can understand why he's pissed. I would be too. But hearing this one incident certainly doesn't make me any less satisfied with the decision I made to buy this vehicle.
If we start getting more reports of the CVT failing at 90k miles, and it seems to be a more common problem rather than an isolated incident, then you can bet we'll all be on board harrassing Nissan to get their act together and fix it for us. There's a big difference between an isolated incident and an epidemic.
My $0.02...