Aston Martin confirms 1064bhp Valhalla for 2025 launch
It's taken six years to get here, but Aston Martin has finally confirmed its new mid-engined, four-wheel drive carbon-tubbed Valhalla will be delivered in 2025
The Aston Martin Valhalla hybrid hypercar has been revealed in production specification, as a foil for the Lamborghini Revuelto and the Ferrari SF90’s replacement. A long time in the works, what was first christened Son of Valkyrie, has evolved into a 1064bhp, four-wheel-drive, 217mph hyper hybrid that breaks ground even the Valkyrie never touched, entering production now as what Aston Martin calls ‘a car of firsts’. Each costing from around £600,000, first examples will hit the road in 2025.
More conventional than the original concept it might be, but the production Valhalla isn’t anything like a conventional Aston Martin. Developed in close collaboration with Aston Martin Performance Technologies, the F1 team’s consulting arm, it will be only the third Aston Martin road car after the One-77 and Valkyrie, to use a carbonfibre chassis. It will also be Aston Martin’s first plug-in hybrid, with as above, a full-bodied 1064bhp and 811lb ft on tap. Even though Aston Martin calls it its first ‘series production mid-engined supercar’, the Valhalla that will reach customers will still be limited. That said, 999 units does mean there will eventually be more than ten Valhallas for every One-77.
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Visually, the initial 2019 car we last saw poking out of Q’s windtunnel in No Time to Die was much more the junior Valkyrie than the production Valhalla we see before us now. Despite its mid-engined proportions the Valhalla retains some traditional Aston Martin styling cues, including the brand's distinctive 'open-mouth' air intake, tucked in waistline and upswept tail. Where its design does deviate from the front-engined cars is the inclusion of a roof-mounted air-intake that blends into the engine cover that floss into the rear body surfaces. The sculpted air scoop feeds the AMG-sourced 4-litre twin-turbocharged plug-in hybrid V8 engine and guides air over the car, retaining the two prominent top exit exhausts and air outlet gills. At the rear, cavernous Valkyrie-like venturi tunnels have been reduced in size from the 2019 concept with an additional two exhaust exits now integrated. The rear lights are now arranged in four stacks of two per side, rather than the original concept’s five.
All the bodywork is carbonfibre as you’d expect. Upper and lower carbon packs are available depending on tastes, satin or gloss and tinted if required, in red, blue or green. There are also six bespoke liveries that reference Aston’s motorsport heritage, available if you so desire.
The Valhalla has evolved considerably from the second, Tobias Moers-mandated static concept shown in 2022, a model that served as the true north star for this production car. From the lights to the profile of the grille and the splitter, to the diffuser, it’s all been nipped and tucked and refined with additions such as the aggressive F1-style vortex-generating fins on the side skirts. A further development is the inclusion of a giant hydraulically suspended active wing, first seen on prototypes at the Nürburgring.
The aero is said to be influenced by learnings from the Valkyrie, with the active elements at the front and rear featuring an automated DRS function, to ‘bleed off’ downforce as speeds rise when in race mode. Aston Martin claims the Valhalla develops a maximum downforce figure ‘in excess of 600kg’, that’s kept steady by the active devices as it accelerates to top speed. The goal was to keep the car’s performance envelope broad and accessible, to maximise driver confidence. The key numbers, while we’re here: 0-62mph in 2.5sec, on the way to a 217mph top speed.
The Mercedes-AMG twin-turbo V8 is most closely related to that found in the Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series, flat-plane crank and all. The dry-sump M178 LS2 that’s to sit midship and power the rear wheels of the production Valhalla is the most potent of the breed by c/100bhp, producing 820bhp on its own. This, thanks to Aston Martin’s own work on the engine, that includes new cams, new exhaust manifolds and stronger weight-optimised pistons. Some 20 per cent more air is being forced into the engine by the turbochargers, than on the DBX707 for instance, thanks to twin-scroll turbos that are roller-bearing mounted, with larger compressor wheels.
The engine works in tandem with a hybrid system for the combined 1064bhp output which is, incidentally, an exact match for the LT7 twin-turbo V8 found in the new Corvette ZR1. It’s also up by comparison to the 998bhp figure initially expected of the car. There are three electric motors in total with two feeding a wheel each on the front axle, allowing for electric torque vectoring (E-TV) and providing reverse ‘gear’. These bespoke motors are housed within the new P4 front electric drive unit, featuring high-strength neodymium iron boron magnets and a new cooling strategy. When driving in EV mode, your Valhalla will be a 247bhp, front-wheel drive electric hypercar.
The third smaller motor sits within the all-new eight-speed dual-clutch transmission (that also houses the Valhalla’s new hydraulically actuated E-LSD) and is there to start the V8, torque fill where appropriate and charge the high-voltage batteries, which are plumbed in using a 400V electric architecture. There is no physical connection between the front and the rear axles.
The size of the battery is as yet undisclosed in the conventional sense, with Aston saying it has 560 cells. The fairly measly 8.6-mile electric-only range (at up to 80mph) is a little up on the Lamborghini Revuelto’s six miles, but significantly down on the Ferrari SF90’s 15.5 miles. So a figure closer to 3.8kWh (Lambo) than 7.9kWh (Ferrari) is safe to assume – a relatively small size that belies the kind of battery power you’d assume has had its part in the Valhalla’s sturdy minimum dry weight of 1655kg. The expected target was closer to the now-discontinued Ferrari SF90’s (claimed) dry weight of 1570kg. It is still, however, 115kg down on the Revuelto’s 1770kg dry weight.
You’d have thought with its carbon tub the Aston might have been the flyweight of the trio, though so does the heavyweight Revuelto. Designed and engineered by AMPT, the tub has a lower section weighing just 74.2kg. Aluminium subframes hang both from the front and the rear of the tub, from which the car’s suspension hangs. At the front the Valhalla features F1-style push rods with inboard springs and dampers, allowing the wheelarch to be clear for optimised airflow. At the rear, the Valhalla uses a five-link suspension system. Bespoke Bilstein DTX adaptive dampers are used at the front and rear.
The Valhalla will be fitted with 20-inch (front) and 21-inch (rear) wheels, shod as standard with AML-spec Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 tyres. Opt for lightweight magnesium wheels (the 12kg saving is accounted for in the stated minimum dry weight) and they’ll wear Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres, with sizes for both tyre choices being the same – 285/30 at the front and 335/35 at the rear.
Hiding within the wheels are ceramic brakes, with 410mm discs clamped by six-piston calipers at the front and 390mm discs clamped by four-piston calipers at the rear. Regenerative braking comes courtesy of the front e-axle when actively braking, and the transmission-mounted e-motor when off throttle, using engine braking. There are regenerative effects incorporated into the torque vectoring, too. Braking is done by wire, to allow full optimisation and consistency of braking effect and feel between the friction and regenerative elements.
The car’s brain, its Integrated Vehicle Dynamics Control (IVC) system, is the latest and most sophisticated iteration of the system first introduced in the DB12. Its job is to manage coalescence between the aero as well as the suspension, steering and powertrain systems to maintain dynamic cohesion and a natural-feeling driving experience. Here, obviously, hybrid electric power and all-wheel-drive are significant new elements that need to be integrated. That was the biggest challenge for Aston Martin’s director of Vehicle Performance, Simon Newton, who claims that ‘it’s this unprecedented dynamic bandwidth that separates Valhalla from its class rivals’. Fighting talk.
The driver can manipulate the above control systems and consequently the character of the car, via four driving modes; Sport, which the car starts up in as standard, Pure EV, Sport+ and Race.
Speaking of the driver, the cockpit of the Valhalla is another area of extreme evolution, since that first concept broke cover in early 2019. That car would, if carried through wholesale to production, have required the driver to plug their own phone in to use as a user interface screen, with an app powering the car’s UX. A neat concept but difficult (and expensive) to make practical for production.
That’s not to say the production Valhalla’s cabin is conventional. The steering wheel has a flat top and bottom sort of like the kind in the McLaren W1 and Ferrari F80. Trimmed with forged, recycled carbonfibre and with large paddles behind, the wheel controls are recognisable from the rest of the Aston Martin range.
Happily, the driver’s display is larger, with brighter graphics than what we see in Aston’s current GT and sports cars. The bright green highlights reflect aspects of the cabin’s trim, with a unique race mode layout. There’s a large tachometer, F1-inspired shift lights, tyre pressure and temperature monitoring, a G-meter and of course, your speed, that all looks very crisp and clear.
Familiar is the gear selector, start/stop button and incredibly tactile drive mode rotary control that surrounds it, set within a flowing forged carbon trim element. There are distinctive vertical air vents in the middle too, below a selection of HVAC controls and the infotainment screen. Within the user interface, the driver can select new visuals to show how the car is managing its various power sources. There are also selectable ADAS modes, to easily switch off unwanted but mandated nannying and nagging.
The seats are one-piece carbon items but not quite as extreme as the pared back kind you find in the Valkyrie. The footwell is raised though, for a similar, if not as extreme, hip-to-heel driving position. There’s what Aston calls an ‘Ampitheatre line’ that wraps around the cabin, while the carbon dash onto which the HMI screen is mounted, is described as a brace. Overall the design is minimalist, if not totally plain with appreciable sculpture that stops well short of unnecessary. It’s sparse, yet sumptuous.
Inside, as outside, Aston Martin’s Q bespoke division will be on hand to realise the specification desires of each of the Valhalla’s 999 buyers. The pricing, as with the production numbers, has been subject to change over the years. On first introduction to the Valhalla name in 2019, this was to be a 500-off car priced in seven figures. Then when it became a ‘production’ car (still limited to under 1000 units), the price dropped to in the region of £600,000. A lot’s happened in the world to make cars much more expensive than they once were, so don’t be shocked if most Valhallas, with a bit of flippancy with the Q brochure, do end up costing their buyers in the region of £1million.
Pulled hither and twain over the years, from full-on hypercar, to ‘series production’ supercar, the Valhalla has still turned out to be an Aston quite unlike any other. You can establish as much from the specs alone. Being so different to any other, whether it’s Aston enough remains to be confirmed, as does how it stacks up in a fiercely competitive marketplace of senior supercars. Customers will find out in the second half of 2025.
