Driving the Aston Martin Valhalla: A Masterclass in Modern Automotive Insanity
“So, how was it?!”
It’s the most natural and expected question someone asks when you tell them you’ve just driven the Aston Martin Valhalla, a nearly $1.1 million supercar with 1,064 horsepower. But reviewing supercars has always been a bit frivolous, and recently, it’s become even more surreal.
When four different friends and colleagues asked me about the 2026 Aston Martin Valhalla the day after my drive, I paused before saying, “Pretty much what you’d expect.” I realized this wasn’t meant to be dismissive; it only makes sense if you’ve actually experienced the peak of supercar technology in the 2020s.
A Long Time Coming
Seven years ago feels like a lifetime, especially thanks to the mental distortion of the pandemic, which made time feel anything but linear. That’s how long it’s been since Aston Martin first unveiled the AM-RB 003 at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show.
The name has changed since then. Valhalla is the realm in Norse mythology where heroic warriors go after death—fitting for a car that’s meant to feel like the ultimate performance machine. It also starts with a “V,” keeping with Aston’s traditional naming scheme.
But a lot has changed besides the name. Aston and Red Bull ended their sponsorship ties after the 2020 F1 season when the new Aston boss, Lawrence Stroll, rebranded his Racing Point team as Aston Martin. More importantly, the automotive world was evolving rapidly, and Aston was changing with it.
There was a lot of internal reshuffling, and the Valhalla’s hybrid powertrain—originally planned as an in-house-designed turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6—was replaced with a hybridized Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series engine. The Valhalla is the only car to use this engine, which Aston has tweaked with bigger turbos, a new intake manifold, stronger pistons, and different camshafts to boost output by nearly 100 hp and 50 lb-ft.
When I sat in a mock-up of the car at the Pebble Beach Concours in August 2022, I laughed at the Valhalla’s F1-inspired reclined seating position. The projected specs for the V-8-based powertrain had jumped to 1,012 hp and an undisclosed torque figure. Aston claimed none of this was final, but it was more than enough for me to say, “Please, I want to drive it, whenever it’s ready.”
Worth the Wait…
Based on what Aston Martin said at the time about the Valhalla’s development cycle, I didn’t expect another three and a half years to pass before I got the chance. But the final production car’s hardware exceeds all those earlier expectations.
The flat-plane-crank, dry-sump, twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 makes 817 hp. Combined with 248 hp from two Aston-designed radial-flux permanent-magnet motors on the front axle and a third motor in the new eight-speed dual-clutch transmission (an Aston first), the car produces a total of 1,064 hp and 811 lb-ft of torque.
Along with the motors, the hybrid system uses a 560-cell battery pack (engineers say it’s an off-the-shelf AMG battery that Aston didn’t design themselves) cooled by immersing the cells in dielectric oil. This means the car can charge and discharge electrical energy very quickly, which is especially beneficial for track use.
Unlike the original Valhalla concept and its bigger brother, the Valkyrie, the production model is also a plug-in hybrid. It can drive up to 8.7 miles on pure electric power and reach a top speed of 80 mph.
…But Something Else Happened Along the Way
Über-nerdy readers might have already taken issue with the use of the term “supercar,” but the company itself calls the Valhalla its first-ever mid-engine supercar. Isn’t it a hypercar, though?
Except for the Valkyrie’s existence, which seems to force Aston to use “supercar” for the Valhalla to avoid claims of “first-ever” achievements. Whatever the term, the Valkyrie is barely a street car; its $3-plus million starting price and production run of 285 examples make the Valhalla’s million-and-change price tag and 999-unit inventory seem almost tame in comparison.
That’s obviously absurd in the real world, but it speaks to something bigger in the world of high-performance cars—in terms of both price and capability.
Millennials, Zoomers, and Gen Alpha are probably used to new million-dollar cars showing up on social media seemingly every month. Each one boasts unheard-of power and torque figures, acceleration and lap times, and a list of tech specs, features, options, and bespoke luxury choices longer than the Nürburgring itself.
For people who are a bit older but not quite AARP members, however, it’s easy to remember the shockwave created by the McLaren F1 in 1993–94, which had 627 hp and cost around $800,000. Or even more so the Bugatti Veyron just 20 years ago, which is generally considered the first million-dollar, 1,000-hp hypercar.
Nowadays? Since the day I sat in the Valhalla prototype at Pebble Beach, we’ve driven cars like the Porsche 911 GT3 RS with about half the horsepower and less tech, but it has so much racing-derived aerodynamics and hardware that it requires pro-driver skills to maximize on a racetrack. Whether it’s a suitable road car is debatable.
Stepping up in price, construction, and tech, MotorTrend has recently driven cars like the Ferrari F80, 849 Testarossa, Czinger 21C VMax, and even the “run of the mill but dizzyingly fast” Porsche 911 Turbo S. You can even buy a hybrid Corvette ZR1X with 1,250 hp, which no one saw coming back when the Valhalla was just a brilliant idea in Aston Martin’s and then-Red-Bull F1 design chief Adrian Newey’s collective minds.
Just Drive It
Whether or not Teddy Roosevelt coined the phrase, “comparison is the thief of joy” is never more appropriate in the world of supercars/hypercars. It’s also relevant here because we know the chances of actually comparing the cars listed above, other than the ZR1X, are zero, mainly because Ferrari rarely allows publications like ours to test their cars in head-to-head comparisons. (Shame on you, Ferrari.)
It doesn’t matter. Given how high the dynamic limits are, it’s much more satisfying to drive a car like the Valhalla on its own merits and appreciate the experience it provides.
Make no mistake; the overall experience matters in a car like this. For a long time, it hasn’t been enough to just be pleasant and thrilling on the road while performing poorly on the track, or to be amazing on the track but miserable on the road. We already knew, mostly, that this Aston Martin was a winner on all fronts after Angus MacKenzie sampled a “prototype” that was pretty much the finished article (minus some transmission tuning) a few months ago.
On the Road
Unlike Angus, who only drove it on the Silverstone Circuit’s Stowe layout in the UK, Aston gave me a 50-minute road loop to start. You might expect a compromised daily driver from a car that looks like a Le Mans Hypercar and has a low, wide stance, but that’s not the case at all. The only compromise is the lack of luggage space; there are some small cubbies in the door cards, but no frunk because that space is taken up by three high-temperature radiators, electric motors, and a racing-style pushrod-actuated inboard suspension.
Aston designed the suspension this way partly because of the F1-style driving position. You sit so low that a conventional suspension would have raised the bodywork too much to maintain clear forward visibility. The seats are bolted so low into the carbon-fiber monocoque that there’s no motor beneath them to slide you forward and back. Instead, you pull a leather strap between your legs to make those adjustments.
You get used to the driving position quickly—it’s not as extreme as it looks—and you realize within two miles that the Valhalla’s custom Bilstein DTX active damper system and overall suspension setup make it incredibly comfortable for a car in this category. The Spanish road route was smooth, but not perfectly so, and the suspension’s Sport and Sport+ settings didn’t have a huge difference, which is a nice feature we’ve praised in other new Astons like the Vantage. Race mode makes the ride harsher, which you might not like for everyday driving, but you can tolerate it, especially on a smooth, fast, sweeping road when it’s time to push.
The square-ish steering wheel feels nice to use, but the molded-in crease/edge on the back that your fingers naturally grip might not be comfortable for everyone. The steering feel itself is intuitive, maintaining a nice weight that’s neither too light nor too heavy across different drive modes.
When I found a long, wide
