Vile Gossip: Not that we were surprised but where did this Audi A7 come from?

So we also parked that thought for the long winter. But the snow melted and the rains came, and with them came the A7. DeMatio drove one home from the New York auto show through torrential thunderstorms for a two-week stint in Ann Arbor. I finished off a second stint in a fully loaded (as in $21,405 worth of options to bolster its $60,125 base price) quartz gray metallic tester, riding out a Memorial Day sky-pounding by Thor, the god of thunder, lightning, and of flooding my clover field. That the A7 3.0 with standard Quattro all-wheel drive can manage a wet road is no surprise. We know Quattro. But the $1500 Sport Package makes it excellent in the dry, thanks to a stiffer suspension and twenty-inch wheels shod with Yokohama Advan Sport summer performance tires, which just hate Michigan roads but give you major stick on smooth twisties. The 310-hp, direct-injected, 3.0-liter supercharged V-6 with a perfect eight-speed Tiptronic automatic proved to be the sweet, balanced drivetrain that Cammisa promised last fall. That the A7 is beautiful was no surprise. Audi is the Monster.com for any car company seeking brilliant designers. Still, every time I spotted the A7 parked on the street, in the structure, or in my driveway, I was captivated by its strength and grace. That the interior is the class of the field was no surprise. The wood laminate that Cumberford loved anchors a beautifully executed cabin that is at once elegantly simple and bursting with cutting-edge technology. The nav system overlays routes on Google Earth and operates as a Wi-Fi hot spot. You can use your finger to spell out addresses on a touch pad while keeping your eyes on the road. When they're not caressing that wood. The only surprise is just how much separation anxiety I've been suffering since the day the A7 left us.