Photos: 2008 Subaru Legacy 3.0 R Limited

Although not huge on cabin tech, the Legacy drives very well in different conditions. We were comfortable driving it in traffic and also had fun on twisty mountain roads.

The Legacy comes in a number of trim levels, with our 3.0 R Limited being the top of the line. As such, it is well-equipped with a standard six-disc changer and navigation system.

The 3-liter engine in the Legacy is a horizontally opposed six cylinder. Other Legacy models use 2.5-liter horizontally opposed four-cylinder engines, some turbocharged and some not.

The Legacy has a nice, small car design, with a look unique from other cars in its class.

The Legacy's all-wheel-drive gives it excellent handling. We pushed it hard on a rain-soaked mountain road and got minimal slip.

The interior of the Legacy Limited is particularly nice, with good materials and fit.

There are a lot of buttons on the steering wheel, but the ones integrated into the spokes are nicely finished. Other buttons between the spokes are less well-designed, and don't always seem necessary.

We very much like that Subaru mounted the paddle shifters on the steering column, which means they don't move around when the wheel is turned.

With the five-speed automatic, we preferred the manual shift mode. We also found that in second gear, we could get the car up to 50 mph without hitting the red line.

The stack is a little bit of a mess, with monochrome displays for the stereo and climate control, then a separate LCD for the navigation system.

Subaru's mode control knob lets you put the car into Intelligent, Sport, or Sport Sharp modes. We didn't find a great difference between Sport and Sport Sharp, and preferred using the manual shift mode for the transmission.

The stereo has an auxiliary input in the center console, with a convenient wire pass-through, letting you plug in an MP3 player and keep it in the cup holder.

We weren't impressed with the stereo, which only displayed file and folder names from MP3 CDs. It relies on six speakers with mediocre audio quality.

The navigation system in the Legacy is solid, but doesn't offer any spectacular features. Its LCD is a bit small compared with more cutting-edge cars.

The navigation system includes these points-of-interest categories. You can also enter addresses by telephone number, freeway entrance, and from the map.

Route guidance worked well in the Legacy, giving us adequate notice on where to turn. But it didn't have advanced features, such as text-to-speech.

We do like that you can enter multiple waypoints into the Legacy's navigation system, setting up complex routes.

The LCD can also be used to display these virtual gauges, which show average and immediate fuel economy, and acceleration.

Another information screen on the LCD shows fuel economy in bar graph format.