Hi gizze,
Congratulations on your purchase.
Can you not trade it up with BMW? Up here in the North they are still selling like hot cakes and second hand ones are very scarce. Maybe people are expecting a bad winter again.
Anyway, if you do go for a auto eventually I suspect that the 8-speed will be available shortly. The auto in my X1 is very good but I recently drove a new X3 with the 8-speed box and its a cracker.