Aston Martin is delivering a three-pronged assault on the hypercar market with its new hybrid beast, the ‘Valhalla’. The new car takes its place alongside the carmaker’s other two equally impressive, mid-engined high-performance models, the Vanquish and its older sibling in the stable, the Valkyrie.
Like the Valkyrie, Aston has again chosen another attention-grabbing name that derives from Norse mythology. ‘Valhalla’ refers to the fabled warrior’s paradise, or Viking heaven, where the likes of Odin and Thor reside over Viking warriors that died in combat.
So, without further ado, let's see how these two rivals contrast and which of the two rules supreme.
How Do They Compare?
The Valhalla and Valkyrie are road-legal, track-ready, performance cars. Both cars are the result of Aston’s continued collaboration with Red Bull Racing and the unquestionable design genius of Red Bull’s CTO, Adrian Newey, the man responsible for injecting F1 technology into these cars and giving them hypercar status.
On the surface, in the looks department, the cars appear very similar. Both look like pedigree Le Mans racers. The cars share such features as pronounced haunches, large rear diffusers, twin-exhausts, jewel-like rear lights, sleek roof air intakes, and both lack rear windscreens. The only visible difference between them is the Valkyrie’s lower front end and extended bodywork around its front wheel arches.
Both cars share the same ultra-lightweight carbon fiber body shell. The bodywork was designed with one goal in mind, speed. This is a key factor for these incredible machines, if they are to return respectable lap times on the race track.
Aston has not yet released any pictures of the car’s interior. But the carmaker has confirmed that the Valhalla will be more road sensible. With more cabin space, greater driver comfort, and a touchscreen display that supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity.
Under the hood, it’s a different story. The cars are very different. The Valkyrie is in a league above its younger brother with its 6.5-liter V12 Cosworth engine. A unit which churns outs 1,160 bhp and revs up to 11,100 rpm, serving up a very impressive top speed of 250 mph.
For the Valhalla, Aston has chosen a 4.0-liter twin-turbo 740 bhp V8 from Mercedes, which sits alongside two electric motors that bump the car’s horsepower up to 937 bhp. This engine will rev up to 7,200 rpm and achieve a fairly respectable top speed of 217 mph.
From a standing start, both cars can sprint from zero to 62 mph in a jaw-dropping 2.5 seconds, which deservedly places them both among the royalty of road-legal production racers.
In a recent sales pitch, the carmaker said that it believes the Valhalla is capable of achieving a six minutes and 30 second lap time at the famous Nürburgring. If it does, the Valhalla will take the coveted crown as the fastest series-production car on the circuit. Beating the current record holder’s (Porsche GT2 RS) time by 13 seconds.
The Valhalla is likely to find itself competing for the checkered flag against the likes of the McLaren Senna and Ferrari’s LaFerrari and SF90 models.
Cost And Availability
Aston Martin is preparing for a market launch of the Valhalla in the second half of 2023. And the company is reportedly in the process of hand-picking buyers, many of which will be subscribers that missed out on the small number of Valkyrie models (150) that the company is producing.
The carmaker only plans to build one thousand Valhalla coupe models. However, this could change very soon as the car will be featured alongside Daniel Craig in the soon-to-be-released, long-awaited James Bond movie “No Time to Die”; a marketing dream. With this kind of advertising, build numbers are only likely to rise.
If you have a serious need for speed and desire a mid-engined thoroughbred racer that you can drive to the race track, the Valhalla is rumored to cost a cool $964,000. This is surprisingly a lot lower than its elder brother’s hefty, perceived price tag of $3.5 million, according to This Is Money.
Summary
This mid-engined hybrid hypercar is once more a testament to the amazing technology that Formula One racing continues to pass down to the premium crop of supercar manufacturers.
Many people will probably question the carmakers decision to produce another track-ready car in what appears to be a very limited market, when it already has the amazing Valkyrie. But when the Valhalla hits the road, it's unlikely to be overdshadowed by its elder sibling. The car’s competitive price, amazing design, and pedigree engineering will likely attract attention from race teams, track enthusiasts, and 007 fans whose pockets may not stretch to the dizzy heights of the Valkyrie.