2026 Aston Martin Valhalla First Test: The Heart Knows What the Stopwatch Doesn’t

Aston Martin’s stated goal for the 1,064-hp mid-engine Valhalla was to shed its gentleman’s GT image and tackle Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren. Although we loved our first and second drives of the Valhalla, we didn’t get the opportunity to tie on our timing gear and get some hard numbers. Given the Valhalla’s million-dollar price tag and 999-car production run, we figured that might never happen.

But then we got an email from one Ryan Warner, entrepreneur, car nut, longtime MotorTrend reader, and newly minted Aston Martin Valhalla owner. He noticed that no publication had done instrumented testing of the Valhalla. If we had the time, he said, he’d supply the car.

What were we going to do, disappoint a dedicated fan? Of course not!

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A Bespoke Hypercar

When Warner’s Valhalla rolled out of its enclosed trailer at our desert test facility, every MotorTrend staffer seemed to have urgent business in the parking lot. Aston Martin will let you customize your Valhalla right to the limits of your imagination and wallet, and Warner and his family created quite a stunner. They chose a day-glow metal-flake yellow-green called Lime Essence. The intake, lower doors, the rear valance, and that ridiculously cool extendable wing are done in bare carbon fiber, while the upper greenhouse is painted gloss black with a Lime Essence stripe. This is a car that doesn’t just grab eyeballs; it knocks them senseless, tosses them into a van, and whisks them across the state line.

If you’ve ever wondered why anyone would spend nearly $1.3 million on a car, as the Warners did with their Valhalla, consider the Lime Essence accents on the wheels, which was the Warners’ idea. It took Aston three months to execute, because the company wanted to be sure the paint would stand up to extreme brake heat should Warner ever decide to take the car on the track. You don’t get this sort of personal attention when you buy a Hyundai Elantra N.

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Nor do you get to talk directly to the CEO and designer, as the Warners did when they visited Aston’s HQ. Inspired by designer Adrian Newey’s aerodynamic goals for the Valhalla—note the lack of an opening hood or trunk; Newey wanted to eliminate seams to improve airflow—Warner opted for the “lace wing” Aston Martin emblem from the Valkyrie rather than the Valhalla’s standard enamel nose badge. The lace wing is made of metal 40 microns thick (a human hair is about 75), with an internal honeycomb structure for stiffness, and it’s installed under the clearcoat. Warner asked us not to quote the cost of that option, lest his wife read this article; suffice it to say that two lace wings would buy you a base-model Kia K4. (Mrs. Warner, if you do read this article, a base-model K4 has an MSRP of $17.99.)

Our Testing Starts With an Unpleasant Surprise

We could have admired the Valhalla all day—actually, we did admire it all day—but we also had some numbers to get, so we got getting.

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The first step in our testing is to weigh the car, and here was our first unpleasant surprise. Aston Martin has been touting the Valhalla’s sub-4,000-pound weight—3,810 is the figure the company bandied about—but that’s dry weight, with no fluids in the car. Warner’s Valhalla, gassed up and ready to run, tipped the scales at 4,219 pounds.

That’s not dreadfully heavy, but for a car with a carbon-fiber monocoque and aluminum subframes, it kind of is dreadfully heavy. We expected the Valhalla’s hybrid powertrain, with two motors up front, one motor in the rear, and a 6.1-kWh battery—in addition to the 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 and eight-speed dual-clutch automatic, of course—to pile on some poundage. But consider the weights of some other hybrid cars in this realm: Lamborghini Temerario, 4,185 pounds; Corvette ZR1X, 4,128; Porsche 911 Turbo S, 3,820; Ferrari 296 GTB Asetto Fiorano, 3,528. These are the numbers from our own scales—and from cars that don’t have a carbon-fiber tub.

Our first test was acceleration. Aston Martin sent a couple of techs to keep an eye on the car, and they advised us to use Sport+ rather than Race mode, because Race preserves battery boost for when you need it to pass while Sport+ pours on the juice from the get-go. We sure as hell felt that, as the Valhalla launched with the force of a Doc Marten delivered swiftly to the backside. We couldn’t feel any wheelslip, but black patches on the pavement bore witness to the 811 lb-ft of electrified torque the Pilot Sport Cup 2s were wrangling.

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Acceleration was straight, strong, and stable, though we could feel a little softening in the top end, which our testing gear duly reported. Zero to 60 came up in 2.3 seconds, tying the 296 GTB and trailing the Temerario and 911 Turbo S by 0.1 second and the ZR1X by 0.2. Then 100 mph came up in five seconds flat, one-tenth quicker than the Porsche but markedly slower than the Ferrari, Lambo, and Corvette, which did the deed in 4.7, 4.6, and 4.1 seconds, respectively.

The Valhalla blasted through the quarter mile in 10.0 seconds, with a 138.0-mph trap speed. Quick? Hell yeah, but still behind the three other cars we’ve been talking about. The 911 was only 0.1 second and 0.9 mph ahead, but the ZR1X had passed the finish line 0.8 second earlier and a whopping 15.3 mph faster. Nota bene, Aston. When your customers can get thrashed by a car that costs one-sixth as much, that’s not good.

Amazing Braking, Just-OK Figure Eight

There’s more to going fast than going; you also need to slow down, and the Valhalla has that down cold. One must keep in mind that the Valhalla’s brake-by-wire system is doing a ridiculously complex job, mixing regenerative, friction, and even aerodynamic braking. (The rear spoiler, if deployed, stands on its nose under hard deceleration.) Lamborghini failed to get the Temerario’s brake pedal to feel right, but Aston did an amazing job. The pedal is firm with a short travel—the perfect racing pedal, in other words—to the point you’d never guess all the work that’s going on behind the scenes. Not until you read the test results, that is: 93 feet from 60 mph, better than all the aforementioned Germans and Americans (but only half of the Italians; the 296 GTB stopped in 88 feet).

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Onward, then, to our figure-eight test, which puts acceleration, braking, and turning together. First, a run around the skidpad, where the Valhalla developed 1.09 g of lateral acceleration. Wow. But it circled the eight in 22.5 seconds at an average of 1.00 g. That time is just OK among its peers; it matches a McLaren 750S we tested in the spring of ’24, but it trails the cars we’ve been talking about by 0.2 (Temerario) to 0.6 second (that pesky Corvette—and even its 21.9-second time was a bit of a disappointment). What, exactly, is going on here?

One of the things we noticed—and rather liked—about the Valhalla is how easy it is to forget it’s a hybrid. It responds a lot like a conventional rear-drive ICE car: sharp turn-in with a transition to gentle oversteer as you get on the power. Boot it, and it’ll wag its tail like a happy dog. Huge fun. One of the reasons to motorize the front wheels, though, is to pull the car through the turns. That potentially ups your speed out of the corner, but it also neuters some of the fun. Aston has leaned into fun—more on that in a bit—and while it’s a choice we agree with, it does affect the numbers.

Also, there’s the core issue that electric motors and batteries add weight, and weight is the mortal enemy of good cornering speeds. (Just ask Colin Chapman, though you’ll need a Ouija board.) Chevy, Lambo, and Ferrari did a better job of keeping that extra weight in check than Aston did. Plus, speeds on our figure eight aren’t high enough to really put the aerodynamics to work, and as we mentioned before, aerodynamics are a key ingredient in the Valhalla’s formula, from the multiposition spoiler that pistons out from the deck to the micro-metal badge that cost—whoops, we almost said it.

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A Car That Transcends the Numbers

Yeah, we were a bit disappointed in some of the numbers, but we weren’t the least bit disappointed in the Valhalla itself. The Valkyrie is Aston’s no-nonsense numbers car; the Valhalla is meant to be enjoyed, and we’re glad Aston Martin wasn’t willing to sacrifice the fun factor for raw speed. We’ve knocked the Valhalla for its quarter-mile and figure-eight times, because the numbers are what they are—but good numbers don’t necessarily translate to good fun.

Here’s the dirty little secret of supercars and hypercars: Outside of a track, a lot of them aren’t all that interesting to drive. Sure, they’re lightning-quick and can brake hard enough to liberate your contact lenses, but most have handling limits so high, you can’t really put the car to work without driving at speeds that are dangerous to both life and license.

The Valhalla is one of the rare cars that transcends its abilities. We drove it fast, and we drove it slow, on public roads and our desert test track, and we’ll be damned if we didn’t have a hell of a good time, all the time. It’s huge fun to push the Valhalla to the limits of your own abilities, but even if you slow down to sane speeds, the Valhalla rewards you with living, breathing steering and a soundtrack better than anything you can dial up on the stereo. Driving it at any speed is an experience rather than an exercise in frustration.

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Was there anything we didn’t like about the Valhalla? The ride, though not as bad as some cars in this rarified class, can get pretty brutal on rougher roads, and the Valhalla’s unique soundtrack only plays at high volumes. Even if you cut out the engine—the Valhalla can run short distances on battery power—there’s still plenty of road noise, and the sounds of gravel plinking off the bottom of one’s seven-figure chariot has to churn up a little stomach acid, even for the 1 percenters. There’s probably not much Aston can do about that, as it’s a known issue with carbon-fiber monocoques, but the heavy doors, which require two hands to open? Surely that’s fixable. That said, it’s nice that the doors cut into the roof, which makes access easier for taller folks.

It’s rare that the entire MotorTrend staff is united in opinion, but so far, everyone who has driven the Valhalla—and we’re talking about several examples on two continents—agree this is one of the great ones. The Valhalla is a looker, it’s fast as all get-out, and it delivers an exhilarating driving experience, every bit as thrilling as the cars Aston targeted. If Aston can get some weight out of the Valhalla, perhaps with newer motor and battery technology, we bet it could close the gap on raw numbers. If that happens, we’re sure Warner will buy another to complement the stunning Valhalla he already owns—and with any luck, he’ll let us drive it.

Our heartfelt thanks to the Warner family for letting us flog their million-dollar Aston Martin.