Aston Martin (ARGGY) is now delivering one of the most important cars in its century-old history to customers.
Valhalla is more than just a supercar. It’s a mission statement, a financial lifeline, and it’s proven to be a truly incredible machine to drive. With a starting price of just over $1 million, it’s at a crossroads — extreme enough to compete with a Ferrari (RACE) F80, but calm enough that you could theoretically drive it to pick up the dry cleaning.
Whether anyone would actually do it is beside the point. The real question is whether this remarkable beast will make Aston Martin buyers part with their cash.
Stop at Valhalla, people stop. They don’t look at a typical luxury car in a polite, appreciative way. They stop.
This car looks like someone took a Daytona prototype and shrunk it slightly to make it road legal. Deep lower air intakes dominate the nose. A prominent air intake rises from the roofline to feed the rear-mounted engine. Then there’s the wing – a massive rear spoiler that fully deploys in Race mode, adjusting in real time to generate more than 600 kilograms (over 1,300 pounds) of downforce.
This is done on purpose rather than for good aesthetics, although at this level of exoticism the lines between the two things quickly blur.
Under the carbon fiber bonnet (and behind the driver, of course) is Aston Martin’s most complex powertrain yet. A 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged flat-plane crank V8 (if you’ve ever heard one of those revs, you already know why that’s important) is paired with three electric motors in a plug-in hybrid system that has nothing to do with fuel economy.
Two electric motors are mounted on the front axle, one for each wheel, allowing for true torque vectoring. The third is integrated directly into the gearbox, handling torque drops during gear changes and covering the clearance before the turbine rotor. Combined system output is 1,064 hp, just shy of the F80’s incredible 1,200 hp.
The results of getting on track are astounding. Valhalla is fast, scary fast, but never feels hostile. Front torque vectoring is key.
When cornering, the system reads the situation and rotates the outside front wheel to spin the car and bring it back on line. It shrinks around you, feeling smaller and more obedient than its performance numbers suggest. Combined with a completely flat cornering attitude and zero perceptible thrust, it’s a serious track weapon.
The suspension structure helps: Formula 1-style pushrod double wishbones up front, inboard springs and dampers visible through the bonnet (a nifty bit of engineering theater), and multi-links out back. Active aerodynamics rounds out the whole package – a system that’s so effective it’s actually banned in most forms of motorsport, although Formula One is only just beginning to explore it.
