My father has a 2002 Liberty; he bought it the same day I bought my 2002 Wrangler. (He spent less money, and came out ahead. He still has it; I dumped the Wrangler last year.)
Comfort-wise: It beat the snot out of the Wrangler. Comfortable seats, steering-wheel mounted radio controls (no more moving hands when you want to change stations, scan, seek, change volume settings, etc), great visibility, damn good gas mileage from a V6 that's more geared for torque than high end, 20+mpg.
Lots of cabin room, especially compared to the Wrangler. Rear seats are ok...but name one vehicle that has great rear seats that costs less than $50k. Always a tradeoff.
Cargo room is good. We could load up for a small range trip without folding down the rear seat (i.e. only 7 or so rifles, maybe 2-3k of ammo)...fold down the rear seat, and things are much more roomy for cargo.
4wd...well, it's a Jeep. IFS not withstanding, it'll go anywhere, do anything that any normal person could ever expect to encounter. Ground clearance isn't exactily up to the size of a HUMMVW, but hey...you get what you pay for
On-road ride is very comfortable.
I haven't tried off-road in it.
The 3.7L is pretty responsive with the auto. If I had to estimate, it hustled to 60 in 7 or so seconds. Might be off, though.
I hear good things about the new diesel offering. Hell, it's a Benz diesel. You could lube it with water and feed it wax-infested diesel to run on. It'd still run longer than Communism ever will.
Also...it should be noted that my father likes changing vehicles every other year or so. He hasen't even thought about ditching the Liberty.
Reliability wise, he hasen't had any problems that weren't covered under warantee and/or took the vehicle out of action for longer than a couple hours at the local wrench.
Admittidly, he's got less than 75k on the clock. I can't speak for long-term yet.
Cabin wind noise is practically non-existant for a vehicle like that.
Hm, what else...
Oh, the only oddity on his:
His driver's door said Cherokee. The passenger door said Liberty. Apparently those crazy canucks stuck a Canadian/export door on the drivers side, and the American market door on the passengers side...dealer stripped the decal and re-applied the proper one.
Oh, a word about controls: For those of us used to window controls on the doors...bzzt. All window/door controls are on the center arm console. Takes a bit to get used to, but aparently it works pretty well.
Just my $0.02..
ETChange: Changed mph to mpg...typo.