Phyllis falls into a coma after the rescue – can she survive? The Young And The Restless Spoilers

Aston Martin Valhalla: The Million-Dollar Hybrid Benchmark of 2025 “How was the Valhalla?” It’s the question everyone expects. After all, we’re talking about a $1.1 million, 1,064-horsepower hybrid hypercar from Aston Martin. But the tradition of reviewing supercars, always somewhat of a frivolous endeavor, has in recent times become even more surreal. So much so that when friends and colleagues asked me that question the day after driving the 2025 Aston Martin Valhalla, I hesitated. How do you explain the state of the supercar art in the 2020s to someone who hasn’t experienced it? A Long Road to Valhalla Seven years—a lifetime in the automotive world, especially after the disorienting isolation of the pandemic years that warped our perception of time. It feels like an eternity since the 2019 Geneva Motor Show, where Aston first presented the AM-RB 003. That name, later swapped for the Norse mythology-inspired Valhalla (the glorious afterlife realm for heroic dead warriors; it also conveniently starts with a V to maintain Aston’s naming tradition), reflected its early sponsorship ties to the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team. A lot has changed since then. Aston and Red Bull cut ties after the 2020 F1 season when the former’s new boss, Lawrence Stroll, rebranded Racing Point as Aston Martin. More importantly, the automotive landscape evolved, and so did Aston Martin. Internal turbulence led to changes, and the Valhalla’s powertrain—originally envisioned as a 3.0-liter V-6 to rival the LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder—was reborn as a hybridized Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series V-8. Compared to the standard AMG unit, Aston equipped it with larger turbos, a new inlet manifold, stronger pistons, and different camshafts to extract nearly 100 hp and 50 lb-ft more torque. The Valhalla now exclusively houses this powerplant. When I sat in a mockup on the Pebble Beach Concours’ lawn in August 2022, I marveled at the F1-inspired reclined seating position. The projected specs for the V-8 powertrain had ballooned from 937 hp and 738 lb-ft of torque to 1,012 hp with an undisclosed torque figure. None of this was finalized, but it was enough to make me beg, “Please, I want to drive it, whenever it’s ready.” Worth the Wait Based on Aston’s development timeline at the time, I didn’t expect another three and a half years to pass before getting behind the wheel. 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. Paired with 248 hp from three Aston-designed radial-flux permanent magnet motors—two on the front axle and one integrated into the new eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox (an Aston first)—the peak outputs are 1,064 hp and 811 lb-ft of torque. The hybrid system includes a 560-cell battery pack—engineers say it’s an off-the-shelf AMG unit, the only hybrid component Aston doesn’t produce. The cells are submerged in dielectric oil, allowing for high-speed energy cycling. As chief engineer Andrew Kay told us, “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 concept and its Valkyrie big brother, the production Valhalla is a plug-in hybrid. It can drive in EV-only mode for up to 8.7 miles at a top speed of 80 mph. The Supercar vs. Hypercar Debate Über-nerdy/semi-pedantic readers may already have taken umbrage to the term “supercar.” But Aston Martin itself refers to the Valhalla as its first-ever mid-engine supercar. Surely, though, it’s a hypercar? Yes, except for the Valkyrie’s existence. Aston seems trapped in marketing limbo, where “super” is the only prefix that doesn’t conflict with “first ever.” The Valkyrie is barely a street car; its $3+ million price tag and 285-unit production run make the Valhalla’s million-and-change MSRP and 999-unit inventory seem relatively pedestrian by comparison. That’s an absurd statement in the real world, of course, but it speaks to a larger phenomenon in modern high-performance automobiles. The millennials, zoomers, and Gen Alpha are accustomed to seeing new million-dollar cars flooding their social media feeds almost weekly. Each one boasts previously unheard-of power and torque figures, acceleration and lap times, and a spec sheet longer than the Nürburgring. For older enthusiasts, however, it’s hard to forget the shockwave caused by something like the $800,000 McLaren F1 with its 627 hp in 1993–94. Or the Bugatti Veyron just 20 years ago, widely considered the first million-dollar, 1,000-hp hypercar. Nowadays? Since I first sat in the Valhalla prototype at Pebble Beach, we’ve driven the Porsche 911 GT3 RS—half the horsepower and tech, but with so much racing-derived aerodynamics it requires pro-racer skills to extract maximum performance. As for road-going comfort? That’s debatable. Stepping up in price, construction, and tech, we’ve sampled the Ferrari F80, the 849 Testarossa, the Czinger 21C VMax, and even the “mundane but dizzyingly fast” Porsche 911 Turbo S. Hell, you can now buy a hybrid Corvette ZR1X with 1,250 hp—a car nobody saw coming when the Valhalla was just a spark in Aston Martin’s and then-Red Bull technical partner Adrian Newey’s eyes. The Aston Martin Experience: Driving the Valhalla With so much happening in the world of performance cars today, “comparison is the thief of joy” has never been more relevant when discussing supercars. (Or hypercars, as the case may be.) It’s also coincidental here because we know the odds of staging a proper comparison test among the cars listed above—other than the ZR1X—are zero, thanks mostly to Ferrari’s long-standing aversion to lending us cars for head-to-head showdowns. (Shame on you, Ferrari.) No matter. With dynamic limits this high, it’s far more satisfying to drive something like the Valhalla on its own merits and appreciate the experience it provides. The overall experience matters in a car like this. For years, it hasn’t been enough to be pleasant and thrilling on the road but perform like understeering garbage on the track, or be mesmerizing on the track but deliver a chiropractor’s billable-hours wet dream on the road. We already knew this Aston Martin was a winner on all fronts after Angus MacKenzie sampled a “prototype” that was virtually finished, save for some transmission calibration, a few months back. On the Road Unlike Angus, who drove only on the short Stowe layout at Silverstone in the UK, Aston provided us with a 50-minute road loop. You might naturally look at the Valhalla’s quasi Le Mans Hypercar appearance and low stance and expect a compromised daily driver. But that’s not the case. The only real limitation is the utter lack of luggage storage; there are small cubbies in the door cards, but no frunk because that space is occupied by three high-temp radiators, electric motors, and a racing-style, pushrod-actuated inboard suspension. Aston designed the latter solution partly because of the F1-style seating position. You sit so low that a conventional suspension would have raised the bodywork too much for a clear sightline ahead. There’s no backrest angle adjustment, so you must adapt to the position. The seats are bolted so low into the carbon fiber monocoque tub that there’s no motor underneath to slide yourself forward and back. Instead, you pull a leather strap between your legs and push to adjust your seating position. You get used to the driving position quickly—it’s not extreme—and within two miles, you realize the Valhalla’s Bilstein DTX active damper system and overall suspension (the rear has a five-link layout) make for a surprisingly comfortable ride for a megacar of this caliber. The Spanish road route we drove wasn’t exactly rough, but it wasn’t perfectly smooth either. Yet, there wasn’t a huge gap between the suspension’s Sport and Sport+ settings—a welcome, usable trait we’ve praised on other new Astons, like the Vantage. Race mode offers a harsher ride you’d likely grow tired of in mundane cruising, but you can absolutely live with it, too, especially on a well-maintained, fast sweeping road during track days. The square-ish steering wheel feels mostly nice to use, but the molded-in crease/edge that runs vertically up the grip’s backside—designed to provide a more positive grip than a rounded surface—might not be the most comfortable for everyone. The steering feel itself is intuitive, maintaining a lovely weight that’s neither too light nor heavy across