Why the new mid-engined Aston Martin Valhalla is a true bargain at £850,000

The Aston Martin Valhalla packs 1,067 hybrid horsepower and is priced from £850,000. It is also outstanding value for money. No, I’m not kidding. Let’s go back to the beginning. The Valhalla has had an elephantine gestation. An early prototype appeared in the 007 film No Time to Die, a blink-and-you’d-miss-it cameo set in the bowels of MI6 (turns out Q has his own full-scale wind tunnel).

That movie was shot in 2019, which was five prime ministers ago. It’s a timeline that has also seen no less than four different Aston Martin CEOs. This car has been an awfully long time coming. I’m thrilled to report it’s been worth the wait.

Wallpaper* test drives the Aston Martin Valhalla

The finished product is somewhat different from the concept, and the better for it. The spaceship exterior has been refined to create a car that looks unmistakably Aston Martin, even though it has little biological relationship to what’s come before.

Under the skin, original plans for a V6-hybrid were shelved in favour of a meatier 817 bhp twin-turbo V8, aided and abetted by three electric motors – two on the front axle and one mated to the superfast dual clutch transmission (another Aston first, and overdue) at the rear.

There are clever active aerodynamics that bend the air to the car’s will; switching from bullet-like low drag to up to 610 kg of downforce when braking and turning into corners. Unseen is torque vectoring wizardry that can keep all that power planted by delivering the oomph to the wheels individually, along with a hugely adjustable electronic stability control (ESC) system that lets you select how much yaw and slide you’d like to experience through the turns.

Most impressive is the Valhalla’s composure, its easiness to drive on road and track, and a level of comfort and quality that would allow you to drive it every day on any tarmac.

Aston Martins normally come with a non-electrified engine in the front, but with a couple of mid-engined exceptions: The 1979 Bulldog, which was a wedge-shaped gullwing-doored one-off designed by William Towns (who also designed 1967’s DBS and 1974’s four-door Lagonda), and the non-PHEV hybrid Valkyrie, which was an insectile and extreme co-production between Aston Martin and Red Bull Advanced Technologies.

The Valkyrie was not a series production car – just 275 were built. Making it conform to the rules of the road so that customers could tax it was a Herculean challenge. This was a Le Mans prototype with a numberplate; so much so that drivers and their passengers have to wear ear defenders connected to an intercom to communicate, even when cruising at low revs.

Now, I’ve met a few would-be Bond girls in my time. I’ve never met one who’d don a set of headphones just to go for a drive. It’s a bit Black & Decker, isn’t it? There’s nothing stylish about going for a ride on a workbench with a power tool.

Which is why the far prettier and refined Valhalla is a much better Bond car. You could actually drive this from Vauxhall Cross to a volcano lair a few thousand miles away and not need to send for an osteopath once you got there.

It’s a car with manners, both on the black stuff and in the eye of the beholder. Whereas competitors from Lamborghini, Ferrari and McLaren look like they’re about to sock someone in the mouth, the Valhalla - whilst no slouch in the ring - would apologise for its uncouth friend and proffer a monogrammed hankie to mop up the blood.

That tension between aggression and elegance is the car’s defining aesthetic achievement. Order it in a restrained colour is my advice. Decorum is what sets this apart from the aforementioned rivals, and that should extend to the palette. Chief Creative Officer Marek Reichman recommends Andromeda Red, a bespoke colour-shift coating which is a £100,000 option.

Top marks for the upselling there, Marek, but I’d go for a less showy shade of silver, with the Valhalla’s grille in silver too, not black, to reinforce that handsome David Brown DNA. For a long time, silver was the most popular colour for Astons, of course, but now it’s green. Fernando Alonso now has more influence than Britain’s most famous fictional spy; a sad inditement of our national defence capabilities. I digress.

The Valhalla’s body is riddled with apertures, negative spaces carved out not for aesthetics but for pressure management. Air is guided, accelerated, split and recombined with a level of intent that would have seemed outlandish from Aston a decade ago. The underfloor is doing as much work as the body above it, and the rear wing - capable of lifting itself into the airstream like a piece of deployable architecture - is not decoration but infrastructure. The active aero is triggered when Race mode is selected.

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The Valhalla's top-mounted exhaust outlets

The carbon fibre wing mirror mount

There’s a full-width front wing that pops down from the underbody like an inverted F1 car’s, but which is completely hidden from view. It switches on the turning vanes and feeds the rear diffuser. At the rear, its massive wing emerges from where the boot might be in a regular Aston. It raises 255mm and moves between air brake, drag reduction system (DRS) modes, and a whole variety of settings in between.

You just drive as fast as you can, it’ll figure it out for you. Ploughing in and out of corners, if you’re brave enough to divert your eyes from the upcoming corner to the rear view mirrors you’ll see the wing dancing around like a matador’s muleta.

I got to sample this at northern Spain’s Circuito de Navarra (that’s probably why I have matadors on the mind), gently tearing at the Valhalla’s performance envelope, as well as on the local roads where I slackened off the suspension, changed from Race mode to Sport and Sport+ to calm things down, and found it to be a thoroughly able cruiser.

I also witnessed a young man at a zebra crossing whose jaw nearly shattered on the pavement when he saw the car, and who grabbed his skull with both hands as if to prevent his brain exploding. That’s the reaction you want with a car like this.

Should you wish to be more incognito, you could keep the blind unawares by selecting EV-only mode which gives you up to nine miles of silent guilt-free motoring at speeds of up to 80 mph. The electric motors are not there to save the planet – or to outfox the visually impaired - but to fill torque gaps, stabilise the chassis, and subtly rewrite the laws of physics at the front axle.

You don’t feel them working, and that is the point. The system’s genius lies in its invisibility. Unlike some hybrid hypercars where the electric torque arrives like a rubber hammer, the Valhalla’s calibration is deliberately restrained. The front axle is tuned to preserve natural steering feel rather than overwhelm it with digital cleverness.

Hybrids were used on the last generation of hypercars, such as the Ferrari LaFerrari and McLaren P1, principally to boost acceleration. What we see in cars like the Valhalla instead are the additional handling benefits of going hybrid, where the extra mass is more than offset by a new realm of torque vectoring, which allows the cars to be playful and can pull you back from the brink if you overstep the mark. Turn in and the rear rotates naturally, pinning the front-end to the road and magically shedding hundreds of kilograms.

The e-motors contribute 250 bhp to the overall pie, but the principal filling comes from the AMG-sourced Aston-modified 4-litre V8. They’ve used a flat-plane crank (a compact motorsport-derived solution which is lighter and higher-revving), and added bigger turbos, reinforced pistons and designer cam shafts. It still only revs to 7,000, which is some way shy of its rivals’ spin cycle.

And this brings us to the first of the Valhalla’s few shortfalls: it doesn’t sound as baleful as it should. Flat-planes are not known for their musicality. You could compare the sound of the other production cars in the Aston range – the Vantage, the DBX S, the DB12 and the Vanquish - to Pavarotti in full Nessun Dorma mode: Soulful and resonant, with effortless high notes.

You could compare the normally-aspirated V12 Valkyrie to said tenor stepping into a scolding hot bath: Operatic, bloodcurdling rage. The Valhalla’s engine note, however, sounds less Luciano, more like an X Factor finalist doing yoga. It’s a little muffled and strained and difficult to get excited about.

There’s nothing restrained about the performance: The Valhalla has a top speed of 217 mph. Zero to 62 mph is achieved in 2.5 seconds.

The massive dihedral synchro-helix actuation doors require long arms and some muscle to open and close. My poor mother would be trapped inside. Electrifying them would add further weight, but it would be worthwhile. Ingress and egress are surprisingly easy – there’s loads of space to swing your legs.

The interior is minimalist; more McLaren than Aston. It’s a little austere, and the square-edged instrument screen and touch screen don’t feel very integrated on account of the scuttle being so low. The exposed carbon-fibre seats are praiseworthy: skeletal with thin, soft padding that’s in all the right places.

The seating position is excellent and at least 20 mm lower than its rivals, I’m told. Storage space is less than a mouse’s bedsit. There is no boot, just a couple of tiny cubby holes in the cabin. This rather spoils the Valhalla’s tremendous potential as a continent-crushing hyper-GT, but I suppose you could always send your trunks ahead with your valet.

At the end of the day, it can’t be a Tardis. The lack of luggage room is a result of the inboard suspension springs, e-motors, hidden spoilers and the engine behind your back. You’re buying it for that, not its practicality.

The steering wheel has been optimised for road use rather than track. There are buttons on the central arms for the usual everyday stuff, and I kept accidentally pressing them as I grappled with the wheel through tight turns. You don’t want to lose your rev counter and gear graphic and replace it with the radio station while pulling a couple of g through a corner, especially when you might rely on the shift lights so as not to snag the abrupt rev limiter. It sneaks up on you.

Apart from those few minor gripes, this is a sensational machine. Perhaps its greatest strength is the ride quality. Aston could have built a car that generates 1,000 kg of downforce if they wanted, but they haven’t because that makes for a rubbish road car. The Valhalla ingeniously bleeds off its downforce above 150 mph so it doesn’t overwhelm the suspension. It’s a perfect balance.

Aston are building 999 Valhalla, which is not a small run. And I wouldn’t bet against them introducing an open top version, which could count for another 999. Assuming they sell 1,998 Valhalla at an average of £1 million each (because most customers will indulge in Q-Branch customisation), that’s a gross of almost £2 billion over the next few years. If Aston don’t post profit soon (finally!) then I can’t get my head around that. Nearly 200 Valhalla have already been delivered, including Gordon Ramsay’s.

I’ve mentioned Ferrari, Lamborghini and McLaren. What models, specifically, is the Valhalla up against? The Ferrari 849 Testarossa costs £408,000, has 1,036 bhp and hits 62mph in 2.3 seconds. The Lamborghini Revuelto costs £460,000, has 1,001 bhp and hits 62mph in 2.5 seconds. On paper, they’re every bit as capable as the Valhalla and half the price. But they’re supercars, not hypercars, and their production run is unrestricted.

The Valhalla sits on a higher plane, one populated by Bugattis, Koenigseggs, the Ferrari F80 and the McLaren W1. The difference is, the Aston is not going to be as rare.

The W1 has 1,258 bhp, hits 62 mph in 2.7 seconds, has a top speed of 217mph (just like the Aston), and is priced at £2 million. It’s restricted to 399 units. The F80 has 1,183 bhp, hits 62 mph in 2.15 seconds, also has a top speed of 217 mph, and is priced at a chunky £3.15 million. 799 will be built – 200 fewer than this Valhalla.

On that basis, even though it might not be quite as exclusive, the Valhalla is a bit of a bargain. It’s also the prettiest car by far, and the best behaved. Aston Martin have really outdone themselves with the Valhalla. It’s the most accomplished car they’ve ever built.