Aston Martin Valhalla, jointly developed by Aston Martin and Red Bull Racing, and the first mass-produced hybrid mid-engine sports car, made a stunning debut in Chengdu recently. The car began accepting domestic reservations last year and will be officially delivered at the end of 2023.
Valhalla is the result of the cooperation between Aston Martin and Red Bull Racing. The prototype is AM-RB 003, which was unveiled in 2019. AM represents Aston Martin, RB represents Red Bull Racing, and 003 represents the third cooperative model.
Valhalla follows Aston Martin's tradition of starting with the letter "V". The name also originates from Norse mythology, meaning Valhalla, the residence of Odin, the King of Gods.
The styling of Valhalla is very different from previous Aston Martin GT sports cars with a front-mounted layout. It can be said that except for the iconic blade grille, it is almost unrecognizable that this is an Aston. Martin. Strictly aerodynamic styling looks more like it was conceived in a wind tunnel laboratory than a design studio.
Valhalla draws on the aerodynamic design concepts of Formula One and uses a series of active aerodynamic kits to sort out the airflow under the car body through the front, rear wings and venturi tubes, which can generate a maximum weight of 600kg at a speed of 240km/h. Downforce , ensuring the vehicle's strong high-speed cornering capabilities and stability. Valhalla is built with a carbon fiber monocoque. The entire vehicle also uses a large amount of carbon fiber and lightweight materials to achieve maximum body strength while ensuring the body is extremely lightweight and dry. The weight will also be less than 1550kg.
The low and wide front of the new car is matched with the huge carbon fiber front splitter below, which is very aggressive. The simple-looking full-LED adaptive matrix headlights are placed on the expanded wheel arches, showing a full sense of power.
Coming to the side, Valhalla's body lines are very smooth, but its aerodynamic design is more complex than its rich styling design. The large-area carbon fiber air guide grooves and side skirts exposed under the car body serve to obtain a smaller drag coefficient and higher downforce for the vehicle.
The design of the engine air intake is derived from the F1 racing car. It is designed on the top of the vehicle and is made of a single piece of carbon fiber. This design has a better air intake effect and uses vehicle speed to increase the air intake pressure to increase engine power. At the same time, more space is left in the engine compartment to facilitate the arrangement of heat dissipation or other related equipment.
The new car uses a central locking wheel hub to facilitate quick disassembly on the track. The rim size it is equipped with is 20 inches at the front and 21 inches at the rear. The multi-spoke and two-color style fits the shape of the vehicle very well. The tires are Michelin CThe UP2 series of high-performance semi-hot melt tires have front and rear specifications of 295/30 R20 and 325/30 R21 respectively. The exaggerated width of the front and rear tires ensures strong grip. The braking system is a pair of 6-piston calipers at the front and 4-piston calipers at the rear with large-size carbon ceramic brakes to provide sufficient braking force for the vehicle.
The shape of the rear part of the car is extremely arrogant, and the large-area carbon fiber rear diffuser is particularly eye-catching. This kind of shape can be said to have completely ignored the ideas of the styling designer and was completely designed for aerodynamics. In addition, there is a large-area guide grille, which shows that a lot of effort has been made in aerodynamics.
Perhaps in order to make room for the aerodynamic kit, the taillights of the new car only have a small area. The beam-type taillights are derived from Aston Martin's other track-focused sports car Vulcan. Now they appear on such a top-level supercar, and their temperament matches very well.
The design of the Valhalla exhaust system is similar to that of the Porsche 918 Spyder. It is located on the top of the hood and adopts a dual outlet layout. On the one hand, this design, like the taillights, leaves more room for aerodynamics. On the other hand, it effectively shortens the length of the exhaust pipe and reduces the weight. At the same time, the shorter exhaust pipe can also reduce the weight of the exhaust pipe. Small exhaust resistance, thus playing a positive role in improving engine performance.
In terms of power, Valhalla uses a 4.0T V8 twin-turbocharged engine and two sets of motors. The engine outputs 750 horsepower and the motor part provides 204 horsepower. In hybrid mode, the new car can release up to 950 horsepower, accelerate from 0-100km/h in only 2.5 seconds, and reach a top speed of 350km/h. In pure electric driving mode, the top speed is 130km/h and the cruising range is 15km.
The gearbox is a new 8-speed dual-clutch gearbox specially developed for the hybrid era. It adopts an E-reverse design and uses a motor to drive directly to reverse, eliminating the traditional reverse gear, making the overall space of the gearbox more compact. , lighter weight. The rear axle is equipped with an electronic limited-slip differential (E-Diff) for maximum traction and handling flexibility. The official target lap time of the Nürburgring Nordschleife is within 6 minutes and 30 seconds.
Summary: Compared with the performance-oriented images of Ferrari and Lamborghini in the minds of Chinese people, Aston Martin has always been noble and elegant in front of us. Valhalla lets us see another side of Aston Martin, where everything serves aerodynamic design and only pursues pure speed. This is a bold attempt by Aston Martin, and we look forward to the next time it is presented to us in "complete" form.