Aston Martin Valhalla: The Poster Child of Modern Performance Madness
“So, how was it?!”
It’s the natural question to ask after driving Aston Martin’s almost $1.1 million, 1,064-horsepower Valhalla. But reviewing supercars has become a somewhat frivolous tradition, drifting increasingly into the surreal. When friends and colleagues asked the same question the next day, I hesitated before replying, “Er, exactly how you expect it to be.” It’s a response that only makes sense if you’ve actually experienced the state of supercar art here in the 2020s.
A Long Time Coming
Seven years feels like a lifetime, a sensation amplified by the isolating pandemic years that made time feel non-linear. That’s how long it’s been since Aston first presented the AM-RB 003 at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show.
The name, derived from Norse mythology (Valhalla: the glorious afterlife realm where heroic dead warriors go before an epic final battle; also conveniently starts with a ‘V,’ fitting Aston’s naming convention), reflected the automaker’s sponsorship ties to the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team.
A lot has changed since then, and not just the name. Aston and Red Bull severed ties after the 2020 F1 season when new boss Lawrence Stroll rebranded Racing Point as Aston Martin F1. More importantly, the automotive landscape and Aston itself were evolving rapidly.
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Aston Martin Valhalla: The Poster Child of Modern Performance Madness
“So, how was it?!”
It’s the natural question to ask after driving Aston Martin’s almost $1.1 million, 1,064-horsepower Valhalla. But reviewing supercars has become a somewhat frivolous tradition, drifting increasingly into the surreal. When friends and colleagues asked the same question the next day, I hesitated before replying, “Er, exactly how you expect it to be.” It’s a response that only makes sense if you’ve actually experienced the state of supercar art here in the 2020s.
A Long Time Coming
Seven years feels like a lifetime, a sensation amplified by the isolating pandemic years that made time feel non-linear. That’s how long it’s been since Aston first presented the AM-RB 003 at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show.
The name, derived from Norse mythology (Valhalla: the glorious afterlife realm where heroic dead warriors go before an epic final battle; also conveniently starts with a ‘V,’ fitting Aston’s naming convention), reflected the automaker’s sponsorship ties to the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team.
A lot has changed since then, and not just the name. Aston and Red Bull severed ties after the 2020 F1 season when new boss Lawrence Stroll rebranded Racing Point as Aston Martin F1. More importantly, the automotive landscape and Aston itself were evolving rapidly.
There was chaotic internal turnover, and the Valhalla’s hybrid powertrain—initially planned as an in-house-designed turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 with performance to rival the likes of LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder—was switched to a hybridized Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series-derived twin-turbo V-8. (Compared to the GT Black Series, Aston boosted it with larger turbos, a new inlet manifold, stronger pistons, and different camshafts, adding nearly 100 hp and 50 lb-ft. The Valhalla is now the exclusive home of this engine.)
Worth the Wait…
When I sat in a prototype mockup at the Pebble Beach Concours in August 2022, giggling at the Valhalla’s F1-inspired reclined seating position, the projected specs for the V-8-based powertrain had jumped from a combined 937 hp and 738 lb-ft to 1,012 hp and an undisclosed torque figure. Aston maintained nothing was finalized, but it was more than enough to make me say, “Please, I want to drive it, whenever it’s ready.”
Based on Aston Martin’s roadmap at the time, I didn’t expect another three and a half years to pass before I got my chance. But the production version’s hardware exceeds all those earlier expectations.
The flat-plane-crank, dry-sump, twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 produces 817 hp. Combined with a total of 248 hp from two Aston-designed radial-flux permanent-magnet motors on the front axle and a third mounted within the new eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox (an Aston first), the peak outputs are 1,064 hp and 811 lb-ft.
Alongside the motors, the hybrid system features a 560-cell battery pack—engineers say it’s an off-the-shelf AMG battery, the only part of the hybrid system Aston doesn’t manufacture—kept cool by immersing the cells in dielectric oil. Chief engineer Andrew Kay explained the simplified upshot: “We’re able to push energy into the battery and cycle it out very quickly. This is very good for track use, in particular.”
Unlike the original Valhalla concept and its bigger brother, the Valkyrie, the production model is a plug-in hybrid, capable of 8.7 miles in EV-only mode with an 80 mph top speed.
…But Something Else Happened Along the Way
Über-nerdy/semi-pedantic readers might already take issue with the term “supercar,” but the company itself calls the Valhalla its first-ever mid-engine supercar. Surely, it’s a hypercar?
Yes, except for the Valkyrie’s existence, which seemingly paints marketing departments into a corner where “super” is the preferred prefix for “first ever.” Whatever. The Valkyrie is barely a road car; its $3+ million starting price and 285-unit production run make the Valhalla’s million-and-change MSRP and 999-unit inventory seem relatively pedestrian.
Of course, that’s an absurd statement in the real world, but it speaks to something bigger in modern high-performance automobiles, both in terms of price and capability.
Perhaps Millennials, Zoomers, and Gen Alpha are long accustomed to new million-dollar cars populating their social media feeds almost weekly. Each one spits out once-unheard-of power and torque figures, acceleration and lap times, and a list of tech specs, features, options, and bespoke luxury choices longer than the Nürburgring’s full endurance layout.
For those a bit older but hardly AARP members, however, it’s easy to recall the shockwave created by something like the 627-hp, $800,000-ish McLaren F1 back in 1993–94. Or even more so, the Bugatti Veyron a mere 20 years ago, generally considered the first million-dollar, 1,000-hp hypercar.
Nowadays? Since I sat in the Valhalla prototype at Pebble Beach, we’ve driven the Porsche 911 GT3 RS—which only has about half the horsepower and overall “exotic” tech but brings so much racing-derived aerodynamics and hardware that it requires pro-racer skills to maximize on a track. Its suitability as a road car, given the suspension setup, is fair game for debate.
Stepping up, to varying degrees in price, construction, and tech war-chest, MotorTrend has sampled the Ferrari F80, 849 Testarossa, Czinger 21C VMax, and even the more “run of the mill but dizzyingly fast” Porsche 911 Turbo S, to name just a few. Hell, you can buy a hybrid Corvette ZR1X with 1,250 hp that no one saw coming back when the Valhalla was just a brilliant spark in Aston Martin’s and then-Red Bull F1 design guru (and now Aston F1 managing technical partner) Adrian Newey’s collective minds.
Just Drive It
Whether or not Teddy Roosevelt originated it, with all this in mind, “comparison is the thief of joy” has never been more apt in supercar… ahem, hypercar terms. It’s also coincidental because we know the odds of ever orchestrating a proper comparison test among the vehicles mentioned above—perhaps other than the ZR1X—are zero, thanks mostly to Ferrari’s long-standing aversion to supplying publications like ours with cars for head-to-head showdowns. (Shame on you, Ferrari.)
No matter, because given how high the dynamic limits are, it’s a far more satisfying endeavor to drive something like the Valhalla on its own merits and for whatever experience it provides.
On the Road
Make no mistake; the overall experience matters in a car like this. For quite a while, it hasn’t been good enough to be pleasant and thrilling on the road but perform like understeering crap on the track, or be mesmerizing on the track but deliver a chiropractor’s billable-hours wet dream on the road. We already knew, mostly, that this Aston Martin was a winner on all fronts after MotorTrend’s Angus MacKenzie sampled a “prototype” that was pretty much the finished article, save for some transmission calibration, a few months back.
This time around, Aston gave us a 50-minute road loop to begin with. You might naturally look at the Valhalla’s pseudo Le Mans Hypercar appearance and low, wide stance and expect a compromised daily driver, but that’s not at all the case. At least, other than the utter lack of luggage storage; there are some small cubbies in the door cards but no frunk due to that potential cargo space being eaten up by three high-temp radiators, the electric motors, and a racing-style, pushrod-actuated horizontally mounted inboard suspension layout.
Aston executed the latter solution in part because of the F1-style driving position; you sit so low that a conventional suspension would have raised the bodywork’s height too much to maintain an entirely clear sightline ahead. There’s no backrest angle adjustment, so you must adapt to the seating position, and the seats are bolted so low into the carbon-fiber monocoque tub that there’s no motor beneath them to slide yourself forward and back. Instead, you pull a leather strap between your legs and push to and fro to make those adjustments.
The Experience
You get used to the driving position quickly—it really isn’t that extreme—and you realize within two miles that the Valhalla-specific Bilstein DTX active damper system and overall suspension setup (the rear end uses a five-link layout) make for a dang comfortable megacar of this variety. The Spanish road route we drove was hardly a rough one, but neither was it infinitely smooth and perfect, yet there wasn’t a wide gap between the suspension’s Sport and Sport+ settings—a welcome, usable trait we’ve praised on