Ria was ready. She had spent two weeks being chauffeured around metropolitan Manila in a van. That was hell for a car nut passionately in love with driving, a suffering unrelieved by Manila's traffic congestion.
When she returned to the United States, Ria Manglapus was ready to drive something new, including the big red Nissan Titan crew cab pickup truck that greeted her on her arrival at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
The truck was a necessary ruse. This column's subject, the 2008 Audi R8 sports coupe, was parked in my driveway. You can't load two week's worth of overseas vacation luggage into a sports coupe, especially not in one with an itty-bitty (3.5 cubic feet) cargo bay in its nose.
We deposited Ria's luggage at her house and returned to my place to pick up the all-wheel-drive, 420-horsepower R8 coupe -- Audi's bid to grab sales from Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche in the exotic-car wars still raging around the pockets of the super-rich.
Ria, my associate in vehicle evaluations, stared at the silver, long-nosed coupe. It stared back at her. From her mouth came a crescendo of "wows," as in: "Wow! Wow!! Wow!!!" And in a fourth "Wow!!!!" she was gone.
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