The Aston Martin Valkyrie Is a $4.5 Million Insane Hypercar

This is the new Aston Martin Valkyrie Spyder, and wow, it has a V12, it has over 1,100 horsepower, it costs more than $4 million, but also, just look at it. This is one of the craziest, most insane, most radical hypercars in automotive history, and today I'm going to review it and show you all of its quirks and features. Today's video is sponsored by Cars and Bids, which is my online car auction website for modern enthusiast cars. So far, Cars and Bids has hosted more than 20,000 car auctions of special, cool and interesting cars like this, and this, and this, and this. So if you're looking to buy or sell an enthusiast car, do it on Cars and Bids. All right, time for the quirks and features of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, and let's start with the basics because they're insane. But first, I want to say thank you to the owner of this car, Supercar Ron. He has a YouTube channel where he documents life with all sorts of crazy hypercars, and I sincerely appreciate him letting me film a video, a full review of the Valkyrie and get behind the wheel, which I will later. You can check out Supercar Ron on his channel. I'm going to link them in description below and you should because he's got some great content with some crazy cars including this one. So let's talk Valkyrie. We'll start with the powertrain. It's a 6.5 liter naturally aspirated V12 developed by Cosworth, the famed engine builders, which makes a thousand horsepower at 11,100 RPM. That's amazing. There's also a hybrid component which adds even more power to the already insane V12, and the result is 1,160 horsepower and 665 pound-feet of torque. Those are tremendously serious figures for any car, but especially this car since the curb weight is under 3,000 pounds. You have all that power in a relatively lightweight hypercar. Of course, the results are amazing numbers, zero to 60 in two and a half seconds, on its way to a top speed of 220 miles an hour, limited only by tires. Because the car produces so much downforce, it's so heavy, there was no tire that could take that weight at a higher speed. Although, in theory, the car could go even faster. And then there's the rarity. Aston Martin is only making 150 Valkyrie Coupes, Plus another 85 Spyder models like this one, and then a handful of race track only AMR Pro models. The result, less than 250 of these on the entire planet. And yes, the price tag around four and a half million dollars for this Valkyrie Spyder, crazy number. for a crazy car. So let's talk quirks and features, and we'll start on the outside, where a big story of this car is aerodynamics. This car honestly looks like a Formula One car that's been road legalized. It really has that appearance, especially as you look carefully at it in a lot of different angles and specific areas. My personal favorite aerodynamic piece of the car is this unbelievable tunnel that essentially runs under The entire car, all the way to the rear, you can see from behind. That is an incredible look that you will never see on basically any other car. Plus, check out the front. This spoiler up front looks essentially like what they have on Formula 1 cars, except here we are on the road in this one. It's absolutely amazing to see it. But, you're up front looking at that spoiler, and you look under the nose and look closely, and you will see that there is a camera. mounted there. Obviously, its images are shown inside the car to the driver to make it easier to maneuver, but it's a little reminder that this is indeed a road car. But you couldn't forget it because of all the amazing engineering. For instance, this panel behind the front wheels separates dirty air, air that's coming off the tire, from clean air, fresh air that's coming through underneath the car for aerodynamic benefit. You will not find a panel like that on, anything. And of course, there are many more quirks. The Aston Martin badge on the front of the car seems like it's just painted on. You run your finger over it and you barely feel anything. But actually, it's a metal badge that has been chemical etched into a metal as thin as a human hair and then placed on the car. And apparently the badges are stored in a refrigerator until they're ready to be put on the car because you got to keep it cool until it goes on for whatever reason in the production process. Now, they do that to save weight, and the weight savings goal with this car is tremendously real. Aston Martin tells me that all of the lighting elements on the outside of this car, all of them added together, weigh less than one taillight on an Aston Martin Vantage. Really, we're focused on lightweight. And since we're up front, let's talk about the storage compartment, if you can call it that. This front panel, as you can see here, it opens, believe it or not. You basically put pressure on the upper edges, left and right, and then it pops open, revealing, well, there's not really a storage compartment in here. This piece down at the bottom, the very nose, is the only storage compartment, and obviously it's filled right now with tire stuff. tire sealant and compressor so that you can fill a tire and patch it if you should have a flat in your Aston Martin Valkyrie. Now also under this panel you can see this is where you add windshield washer fluid and it's where you add brake fluid and here's a cool tidbit. You can see the little caps for brake fluid are positioned in a way that they're too tight against the bodywork to get your fingers around. Well you can pop off the top of the cap and it acts as like a coin that you can stick Stick in and twist it almost like a screwdriver. Getting off the brake fluid cap so you can add more. Also under here, you can see the screw, which you'll notice isn't your typical Phillips head or flat screw. And that's because it's some special aerospace screw, Aston Martin told me. And those types of screws are positioned throughout the car. In fact, Aston told me that if you took this car to a regular Aston Martin dealership for service, only a handful of their tools would actually be able to do anything on this car. It's so specialized. There's only one service point in all of North America for it, and it's in New York. So if you have a problem with the car, that's where you gotta go. And one big reason for that is because jacking the car isn't exactly easy. You don't just stick it on a lift and put it up in the air. Instead, there are jacking points. One of them is right here up front at the very front, and then there's another position also in the center in back. And there is a specially designed jack that has a cable going underneath the car that That lifts it up at those two Two jacking points to get it off the ground so it can be serviced. Very different from your V8 Vantage. And of course, there's more, a lot more. Here's a great one. By regulation, cars sold in Europe must have turn signals mounted on the side in addition to front and rear. This car's side mount turn signal is right here. This tiny little panel is the side turn signal to comply with that regulation. But. The craziest part is the turn signal bulbs are not mounted on the turn signal because they're too large to fit into that space right behind the lens. Instead, the bulbs are mounted further into the body of the car, and then the turn signal flashing is reflected through some mirrors inside the fender out into this lens so it actually flashes. craziness. Also crazy up here, you can see the windshield wiper, which is mounted essentially vertically, like straight up as opposed to horizontally, like basically every other car. But this is how race cars mount their windshield wipers because of the aerodynamic benefits. Flat wipers create drag. This one doesn't. And Aston Martin claims this windshield wiper will operate at this car's 220 mile an hour top speed. Also up here, you can see visible suspension components And it's sort of in the middle of the car because the wheel. The wheels are essentially set off from the main part of the body. It's almost like an open-wheel car, like a race car, and that is incredible to see in a vehicle that's production-ready and has a license plate. And speaking of license plates, let's go around to the back and look at a few crazy things back here, starting with the exhaust, which is mounted in the very center top, where you would expect to see the license plate, but they've prioritized the exhaust over, and the license plate is below that. And you'll notice there's this metal lip. Basically sticking out from the exhaust Aston Martin told me they had to put that on there because the heat from the exhaust was melting metal license plates below it and so that helps to dissipate some of the heat so it doesn't attack the license plate now also back here you can see well this giant piece that comes out of the center interestingly that's where you plug it in to keep it charged keep the battery charged you pull off this panel plug it in there and that just feels and looks very Very cool. And so by the way, Do the brake lights. You can see the taillights have these sort of individual bricks of glass that come out from the body of the car. It looks incredibly cool. Even when the brake lights aren't on, it's a very distinctive look. But even more interesting than that is the third brake light, which is this incredibly tiny piece here. Aston Martin told me this is the smallest brake light on any vehicle in the entire car industry, and it's only a quarter of the size of the human eye. So it's really, really tiny, but quite bright and actually more useful than you'd expect. Now, in back, another very cool thing with this car is a roof scoop. You can see as an air intake to bring extra air into the engine over the roof, which is just so cool. But the drawback of a roof scoop is it pretty much eliminates the capability for you to have a rear window. And so this car does not have one. Instead, there is a camera mounted right here, as you can see, And that provides your rearview mirror case. Capability cameras are a bit of a theme of this car as you'll see when we go inside So let's go inside and check it out. Okay, so getting inside first off the key is actually kind of normal It's surprisingly heavy, but otherwise it's just lock and unlock buttons wrapped in this sort of leather or carbon fiber look And it says Aston Martin Valkyrie on the outside. It's cool, it's distinctive, but nothing too insane or fancy here. However, getting inside the car is far from traditional. So, you walk up to the car and there's no visible door handle. You start sticking your hand under here and there's no... door handle that you can feel, either. Instead, to open up the door, you have to go behind the door itself, into the bodywork, and you feel around, and you eventually feel a little rubber thing that you can push, and the door unlatches. And from there, you lift it up and open it. But you're not quite done. Getting into the car here would be basically impossible. This opening is tremendously small. And so the door... ...has a door. You have this little panel on the carbon fiber sill. You push it, and it pops open the roof door so that you can get inside. Each side of the Valkyrie has two doors. This is essentially a four-door car. Now... It's worth pointing out that is unique to the Valkyrie Spider, which is what this car is, because the regular Valkyrie Coupe, that roof panel opens up with the door. But in the Spider, that roof panel is separate because it can be removed. I'll show you that in a little bit. And so it opens separately from the door. But before we climb inside... Let's talk about getting into the engine compartment, which amazingly, in this car, you can. There's another latch on the driver's side carbon sill here. You pull on it, and it pops open the engine compartment, and then you can go over there, lift it up. You prop it up with a carbon fiber prop rod, and you can see some of this car's amazing Cosworth 6.5-liter V12. It's a small look, but it's there, and that engine is shoved into that space. It's amazing to be able to even see it. Because so many modern hypercars disallow you from doing that. In fact, in this car, not only can you see the engine, but you can even add oil. There's an oil cap there. So if your Valkyrie is running a little low on oil, you just top it off right there. Just add some oil to your $4.5 million supercar. Really, though, it is amazing to be able to even get in there and see. the engine in this car and by the way one other item worth mentioning with the door open you can see a plaque on the inside of the door telling you exactly how special your car is this one says Valkyrie Spider and this is VIN number 22 of 85 Valkyrie Spider models interestingly you have that plaque on both sides driver and passenger so both occupants when they get in the car are reminded of just how rare and special it is but you don't really need those plaques to tell you this car This car is special because when you get inside, It's immediately obvious. Climbing in, the first thing you notice, especially if you're a taller guy like me, it is tight in this interior. And that's because the seats are fixed in place in the cockpit. They don't move. And in fact, calling them seats is a little bit generous. Really, it's just some areas of padding mounted to interior carbon fiber. You can see the headrest, the backrest, the bottom, they're all different spots. It's not really even a seat. Now, If you want more space inside this interior, well... Tough luck, but you can get a little more space if you're the driver for your feet. The pedals are adjustable. There's a little lever under the center of the dashboard. You can pull on it and then kind of push the pedals with your feet to adjust it for taller or shorter drivers. That's really the only adjustment that you have to make the car more compliant for your size. Actually, there's one other big thing that helps make it a little bit easier, especially getting in and out of this car, and that is the steering wheel detaches. You probably already realized it So, if the steering wheel isn't in place, you can take it out, which makes for easier entry and exit. Race cars have this as well, and so does the Valkyrie. But, you can put it on very easily. It basically just snaps into the center, exactly where you'd expect to find a steering wheel, and then it's there in place. And it's worth pointing out, the steering wheel can also be adjusted forward or backward, not up or down, forward or backward, which again, provides you a little bit more room for taller, larger drivers who need more space in here. The next thing you might be wondering is, how the hell do you close the doors in a Valkyrie? The answer is, the roof, you just reach up and close it. There's no, like, latch or handle, you just kind of pull it shut, you gotta pull firmly, and then it closes. From there, you pull the door closed with this strap here, you just grab on and pull it. And in case you're wondering, to open the door in this car, there's a strap actually in the dashboard, as you can see. Ever seen that before? This strap in the dashboard, you pull and the door opens back up. And if you want to open up the roof part, because you basically need to to get out, you use the same panel on the door sill that you use to open it from the outside to open it from the inside. And then you just contort yourself out of the car. It's not easy. And by the way, since we're talking about opening and closing, I mentioned that the spider roofs are removable on either side. You do that with this latch in the back on the ceiling of the interior. You pull that, it unlatches them, and then you can remove the roof. Let's talk through some other stuff going on in this interior. For one thing, the controls in the center, they are very minimal. You have your fog lights, your windshield defroster, your hazard lights, your parking brake, and then a USB port, I guess, to plug in a device to charge it or for music. That's all you get in there. Now, interestingly, there's another control on the dashboard. This is not a start-stop button, as you can see. That's a fire extinguisher. Sure, you do not want to accidentally push that. And deploy the in-car fire extinguisher. It's really a lot to clean up, but there is a plumbed-in fire extinguisher system like some race cars have. But probably the most notable thing in this interior, aside from how tight it is in here, is the screen situation. So. Your rearview mirror is a screen. I already mentioned there's a camera in back instead of a rear window, and so you have a screen for a mirror. You also have a screen on the steering wheel, a screen for infotainment. I'll cover both of those in a minute. And most interestingly, screens for rearview mirrors on either side of the car. That's... Crazy. This car does not have traditional rear view mirrors. Instead, there's cameras mounted on the outside as you can see, and they broadcast their images onto these screens inside the car mounted roughly where you would expect mirrors to be. Now, the real benefit of these camera mirrors is that it improves aerodynamics. You don't have to have some big mirror on the outside of the car You can do this instead, but... This is not U.S. legal. And as a result, the Valkyrie can only be used in the United States on the show or display exemption. This was a federal law that was passed to allow very significant cars to be imported to the United States and used for limited purposes like show or display, which, frankly, is basically what we're doing right now with this car. So, this car is not officially sold in the United States by Aston Martin. It is sold and then... Imported under show or display by the individual owners. And of course, there's more. This car also comes with headphones. You can see them here. You're thinking, why? Are you going to be watching something in the car? No, no. This car is tremendously loud. And the headphones are the only way that driver and passenger can communicate. While you're driving the car, the headphones are sort of plugged in near the seat backs, if you can call them that, and you put them on individual headphones with microphones that you can use to communicate between driver and passenger. Now, these are noise-canceling headphones, so they kind of dull some of the engine note, but Aston Martin tells me that above 7,000 RPM, you can't really cancel that level of noise and you still hear stuff in here, but it does give you the only opportunity to really converse inside the car because it gets so loud. in here at 11,000 rpm. Now, interestingly, this car does have some comfort features, like there are two climate vents integrated into the dashboard. Obviously, two, not very many, but this car doesn't really need a lot of climate vents. The interior is not huge. Now, your climate controls and a lot of your other controls are integrated into the dashboard screen. This is an infotainment system screen, essentially, and it does your various basic infotainment things. You have your Climate control adjustment here, like I mentioned. But there's also Bluetooth. You can hook up a phone and then take calls or listen to music in your Valkyrie. And Aston Martin told me that when you do that, the Bluetooth plays over speakers in the headphones like you would expect. Since regular vehicle speakers, you wouldn't hear anything. It doesn't matter because this car doesn't have speakers anyway. Amazingly, this infotainment system also has navigation. You should know. You can have your Valkyrie navigate you, I guess. And there's a volume control here that you can use to adjust the volume. This is also how you turn on the headlights. You can see off on kind of the low beams, et cetera. And from the upper left, you can pull down sort of a hidden screen that will display your tire pressures and allow you to change your screen brightness. Now, your final screen is mounted. On the steering wheel, you can see it's right in the center, and the primary thing that you'll notice in the middle of that screen is your tachometer, which, as you can see, goes all the way to 12,000 RPM, but right now, it's much more severely restricted, and that's because the tachometer increases or decreases its redline based on whether the car has been warmed up. And once the car is warm, you can access the full 11,000 RPM. But if you park the car or stop and idle, the tachometer's red line will actually decrease again because it's also based on airflow. So not only does the tach go up while you're driving, it can also go down if you're going at low speeds or just idling, which is crazy. Now, the steering wheel will also display a few other items. You can see your battery amount remaining in the upper right. You can see in the upper left, it has your fuel amount remaining, and in the lower left, it shows what drive mode you're in, and it says U, S, and T. That stands for urban, or basically just the cruising mode. Sport is the middle mode, and then T is for track, which is sort of the ultimate mode they say puts away all pretense of comfort or convenience for a focused track experience. Now... Over on the right side of the steering wheel, this switch marked TC, you can use that to dial up or down your traction control while you're driving the car in case you want less nannies in your 1,200 horsepower Valkyrie. Now, also mounted on the steering wheel, you'll notice a few other things. For one thing, integrated into the Alcantara rim of the wheel is the horn. You can see the little horn buttons. You push that, and then, well, they make a horn sound. And here's what the horn sounds like on the Aston Martin Valkyrie. And there's more, too. For instance, the turn signals. You can see buttons for left or right turn signals. You tap the button, and the signal goes on for a few flashes. You hold it down, and it turns on permanently until you turn the wheel like a normal car. You also have the lift system here. You push that, and the car lifts itself up so it can clear lower stuff. And you have your windshield wipers in the lower right. You can push for a windshield wash, or you can adjust the wiper amount. With this switch at the very bottom. Other buttons on this steering wheel, you have one marked ERS, which allows you to access your full amount of power. ERS is the hybrid electric battery system in this car. You push that, you have all your power for all your... Crazy acceleration needs. You also have your high beams here, as you can see, and in the center, your start-stop button to turn on the car, along with a launch control. You can see LC with the checkered flag, and you have a button to go into neutral. Neutral in this car is actually kind of interesting because it's an especially important gear. I say that because the car starts in neutral automatically every time. If you want to go forward, you use the right shift paddle to shift into first gear, And then you can drive. But if you want to go into reverse, you first have to go into neutral and then use the left shift pedal to go into reverse. It has to happen sequentially. There's no separate button for reverse. You got to do both at once, which is interesting. And speaking of the transmission in this car, it's a seven-speed automated single-clutch manual. So like an old automated manual, like in the Lamborghini Aventador and the Gallardo, et cetera, that's what they have in this car. No dual-clutch in the Valkyrie. And also, in case you were wondering, it's rear-wheel drive. No four-wheel drive to save you or make you look like a hero. Rear-wheel drive only with 1,200 horsepower. It must be an absolute menace. And now it's time to get behind the wheel with Supercar Ron, the owner of this car, and let's find out. OK, so now it's time to drive the Valkyrie with only one problem. This car is so incredibly loud inside that even though I was wearing a microphone right in front of my mouth, virtually all of the driving experience sounds like this. In fact, supercar Ron wore his own microphone and his team contacted me after we finished filming asking for my audio because theirs didn't work either. I guess that's just how it is. It is, this is a mechanical like experiential thing. I just got in that Pininfarina Batista and that was cool and fast but like it's an electric car. The feel of this interior, the sound, the single clutch transmission actually I think benefits it. It makes it feel more mechanical. You lose that in so many of these cars, especially the hybrid ones, which this is, but it does not feel like it. It feels like an old school, big old V12. Amazing. The feel. This is unreal. Just the feel of going at 11,000 RPM in a car with a license plate, the old Lamborghini This is a serious car feel that every car is starting to get away from. Electric cars, which I think a lot of them are great, but they're pervading the world and they're eliminating the experience that this car offers. I mean, there's nothing like what we just felt. I also, to your point, cannot believe how relatively tame it is in a drive-around setting. Like, if I wasn't at 11,000 RPM, it's actually a pretty acceptable thing. Okay. The single craziest thing. This car is absolutely unbelievable. It is totally a different experience than any other of these special cars. It really is. And we're good. We survived. The car survived. And that actually gave you a pretty good glimpse into this kind of vehicle. All we did was drive up the PCH and drive up like the Newport Coast Drive. It also gives you an idea of what is a race program if you have to race. They do it for hours. We just floored it a couple times like a bunch of idiots. And so that's the new Aston Martin Valkyrie Spyder, one of the craziest cars on the planet. This is truly an amazing car with amazing performance and an amazing design and an amazing price tag. And I'm thrilled I had the chance to review it. And now it's time to give the Valkyrie Spyder a Doug score. And the Doug score is here, 67 out of 100, which places the Valkyrie here against other sort of similar cars. What's the difference between the Koenigseggs and the Chirons and the Speedtail, which are rated higher, and the McLaren P1 GTR and BAC Mono, which are rated lower? The driving experience is more P1 GTR, BAC Mono, but it's just slightly more street-usable, which lifts it above those cars. Still, it doesn't rise to the level of the Chiron because the Valkyrie is simply more compromised, but that's sort of the point. You want to go to dinner in speed and style? Get a Chiron. You want to get your face kicked in, in speed and style. Get a Valkyrie. Lord. Lord. Oh, this needs to be opened. Okay.