Ferrari fighter is monstrous PHEV with mid-mounted V8 and 600kg of downforce
This is the finished Valhalla, the mid-engined Aston Martin that sits somewhere between the supercar and hypercar spheres.
We’ve driven a prototype previously but this is now a production-spec car-so production-ready, in fact, that they’ve already delivered around 200 of the 999 they’re planning to build. Do let them know if you have £850k and would like one.
To recap, this is Aston’s first sort-of-series-production mid-engined car, and they call it the ‘son of Valkyrie‘. The idea was pitched publicly as long ago as 2019, but the car has become more complicated since. It’s a plug-in hybrid with a carbonfibre two-seat tub, aluminium subframes front and rear and a flat-plane-cranked 4.0-litre Mercedes-AMG V8 in the middle. That takes the GT Black Series engine (which is no longer in production) as its base but receives Aston-specific mods to its internals, intakes, turbos and exhausts. It drives through a bespoke eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, to which a 201bhp electric motor is applied.
This is where it begins to get decidedly complex. That motor is attached only to the shaft that deals with even gears. Aston didn’t want to put the motor between the engine and gearbox, where the flywheel would be, because that would have extended the length of the unit and made the wheelbase too long, consequently reducing agility.
But it wanted it geared, so it couldn’t put it after the gearbox. So it went to the side. It torque-fills at low revs, can raise overall peak power, reduces fuel consumption when cruising, works as a generator and can help blip the engine revs to sharpen gearshift rev-matching. Aston’s people have explained this to me, but I still can’t comprehend how it does it while being attached to one gearset (don’t write in). And this whole shebang drives the rear through an electronically controlled limited-slip differential.
There’s multi-link suspension at the rear, with Bilstein DTX adaptive dampers, and the tyres are 285/30 ZR20 front and 335/35 ZR21 rear Michelin Pilot Sport S 5s or more aggressive Pilot Sport Cup 2s. There’s no reverse gear, with that being taken care of by a pair of front electric motors, making 161bhp each, which is also how the car drives in EV mode – making it the world’s second front-driven Aston after the Cygnet (obscure car-related pub quiz question setters can have that one for free). These units don’t all max at the same time, so when they’re all blowing, the maximum outputs are 1064bhp and 811lb ft of torque – both of which would have been terrifyingly large numbers a few short years ago, but here we are.
The Valhalla sort of has rivals in the cheaper Ferrari 849 Testarossa and much pricier Ferrari F80, as well as the Lamborghini Revuelto, and you could probably make an argument for a couple more besides. Whatever, though, it’s a novel direction for Aston, and I suspect it now likes having a mid-engined car in its range, especially as more than half of all Valhalla buyers are new to the brand (two-thirds in Europe) and it’s helpfully lifting the average transaction price. The company needs both new customers and an uptick in sale prices if it wants to make any money.
And so to it. The doors swing out and forward, making it easy to drop into the fixed-back seats. You sit low, facing a low scuttle – allowed by pushrods operating the horizontally mounted spring and damper units that you can see just ahead of the windscreen. If sited vertically, they would have to have been mounted to the wheel hubs above the driveshafts so would have protruded too high to allow such a low driving position. As it is, visibility is good, through a broad windscreen and with clearly visible wheel arches to help place the car.
Being so letterboxy and low and with a high-set foot position, it imparts a racy feel. Ergonomics are generally fine. I’d like a rounder steering wheel and there are fewer hard switches than optimal, but this is a hardcore sports car, not a hatchback, so we shouldn’t mind too much. Having so much exposed carbonfibre only enhances the racy vibe, likewise the perhaps unforgivable absence of any luggage volume – even the Testarossa and Revuelto at least have a frunk.
The carbonfibre body sweeps around to the rear, where there is a very large and very obvious rear wing. An active front wing is hidden in the underbody. Here’s where the contradictions begin. All of this technical kit is blended into a package that Aston says maintains “breathability” meaning it has more give and more compliance than you might credit in a car like this. It is a maker of grand tourers, after all.
So while those big active wings can make big downforce, Aston reduces their effect past 150mph, rejecting a tremendously high headline downforce number so that it can avoid incredibly stiff suspension to resist the aerodynamic loads. I mean, it’s still making 600kg of invisible push from 150mph to its 217mph top speed, but above 150mph it bleeds off the wing effect, which means its suspension can have a lower natural frequency so remain softer and smoother-riding. I’m for this.
I’m told I won’t need to use the nose lift on any of the speed bumps I encounter here in northern Spain, and I’m quite keen on that too. The Valhalla has the makings of one of the more habitable of the prototype racer-style road cars. And I think that’s important in a carbonfibre-shelled car, because the material is so rigid and uncompromising when it comes to stiffness and harshness. Aston doesn’t want its cars, even these ones, to feel raw; it wants its drivers to feel good, not intimidated.
There are four regular drive modes, namely EV, Sport, Sport+ and Race, and you can select your preferred suspension stiffnesses and drivetrain responses in a preset too. After a brief flirtation with EV (still quite noisy in the cabin but the mode of choice for not waking the neighbours), I try Sport on the road. It makes for a very natural-feeling blend of characteristics. Like Ferrari with the Testarossa or even Audi with the new RS5, Aston is living in the realm of complexity versus complication.
It wants a complex car to feel uncomplicated to drive, and on the road at least it has nailed it. There’s a flow to the Valhalla, an evenness of response, a slickness of steering and ride and a linearity of engine/motor urge. Excitement? Sure, that too. Flat-plane engines don’t produce traditional Aston V8 growls but at, say, 30mph, selecting third gear and giving it beans elicits tremendous immediate response as the turbos spool, and you hear it all. It’s right behind you and the tub is carbonfibre, after all.
But really it takes a race track to get a feel for the whole caboodle and, in the conditions I found one (rather wetter than those pictured here), even then there are limits to how far around the rev band in higher gears one can go. The sound? Quite hollow; less raspy than a flat-planed Ferrari, perhaps. Not spine-tingling, but I liked it. I won’t routinely use enough of it that I’m likely to trouble the 410mm front and 390mm rear brake discs to anything like their thermal limit, either.
But honestly, given that the Valhalla is a 1000bhp-plus, 1700kg-plus hypercar with by-wire throttle, by-wire braking and enough electric power alone to get one into bother, it’s incredibly friendly.
Aston says that the key to it all is having fundamentally good base dynamics. It has to be a good-handling car, the engineers say, before they start to fiddle with things like torque vectoring, which they like to do only mildly via braking at the rear and more quickly and responsively by underspeeding an inside front tyre.
Because the Circuito de Navarra is very damp today, while I put the car in Race mode and gradually remove all of the driver aids, I also slacken off the dampers to allow more body movement and hopefully find a bit more grip. The Valhalla finds good corner speed even in this crummy weather. There is understeer (much more so than there would be in the dry, one imagines), but it’s easily quelled by trail braking (or not being a plum with entry speed).
And as you approach grip limits, the steering weight increases nicely, you feel the chassis moving about and it rotates seemingly around its middle, then mooches easily under power into a strong, controllable slide. If the front motors are pitching in to pull the car straight again (and I suppose they are at least thinking about it), they’re very discreet, letting you feel like you’re the one doing all the work. The joy is that it all feels so natural in steering, brake feel, throttle response and power distribution, even though all are anything but simple. Which was, I suppose, ultimately the idea.
The Valhalla is an Aston like no other, but in the end it is, after all, an Aston in character: designed to make you feel like you’re having a good time.
