Only 150 customers will enter Aston Martin's inner sanctum to customise their Valkyrie… Make that 151…
The $4.5m Aston Martin Valkyrie two-seater hyper-coupe is an automotive singularity — a black hole if you will. It is portrayed as the be-all and end-all of supercars — nothing will surpass it as it bends the laws of not just physics and gravity, but space and time as well.
Anything that challenges the V12 hybrid Valkyrie meta-car will sucked into a vortex and either spat out in another dimension or pulped into salsa.
The Valkyrie project has been more half a decade in the making, overseen by one of F1’s brightest, the engineering mastermind behind Red Bull Racing F1 team’s four consecutive F1 world championships, Adrian Newey.
Taking a microscope to road regulations, Newey’s obsessive attention to detail has helped craft what will be now, and potentially for many decades, the world’s most extreme road-legal car.
Propelling the terrestrial spaceship towards the horizon is a 865kW/900Nm V12 petrol-electric hybrid powerplant developed by motorsport specialist, Cosworth. Driving the Valkyrie will require training. Heck, even getting into the ‘car’ requires a deep understanding of elasto-kinematics.
But before we even get close to these points, the path to purchase is far more involved than you might think.
Buying a regular car is straightforward. Decide what you want or need, do your research (at carsales, of course), read endless reviews and comparisons (at carsales, of course), then choose a white Toyota Corolla regardless.
At the other end spectrum, in the land of celebrities, pop stars, career criminals and F1 drivers, the experience is far, far more intense… And about a zillion times more appealing to the ego.
Indeed, buying a $4.5 million Aston Martin Valkyrie is an experience unlike any other.
Do or do not. There is no try…
Firstly, you don’t decide to buy a Valkyrie. The Valkyrie decides whether you’re worthy.
Instead of seeing a car ad online or during a game of footy on television, potential Valkyrie customers received a personal letter from Aston Martin CEO, Dr Andy Palmer, inviting them to order a vehicle.
As it turns out, around 600 parties wanted to order the Valkyrie, far more than Aston anticipated given its stratospheric price.
Mr Palmer had the unenviable task of personally selecting the 150 lucky buyers… And telling the unlucky 450 they’ve got to buy an AMG One instead.
Like most super-exclusive high-end vehicles, being chosen depends on who you are, who you know, and, in this case, how many Aston Martin’s you’ve previously purchased to get the nod.
Or if you’re Aussie F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo. Yeah, he’s getting one.
The 150 customers are now part of a specific process handled by Aston Martin’s VIP team, which guides them through several stages to specify and customise everything from the seats – or lack thereof – to the leather upholstery, interior stitching, exterior colours, metal highlights, carbon body work, the list goes on.
If you thought BMW offered loads of options and customisation, you ain’t seen nothing yet!
So, how can Mr Torr and Mr Mahoney afford an almost $5m car? We went halves, of course.
Bespoke and battle-ready
Sauntering into the Aston Martin headquarters in Gaydon, England, we’re ushered to an anteroom and greeted by Libby Meigh, the colour and materials manager at Aston Martin and arguably the most crucial member of the Valkyrie VIP team.
Lobby has a fascinating job and part of it is working with each customer to help tailor the Valkyrie to their liking.
It can be a challenge, she explains, because she must straddle the line between allowing customers to let their imaginations run wild (and yes, we can confirm there will be a pink Valkyrie out there, somewhere) and attempting to steer them towards outcomes that will stand the test of time.
Packing the sort of active aerodynamics, suspension and engine control that will see the Valkyrie deliver F1 race car-like lap times at any given circuit, it’s remarkable how much customisation is available.
Take the cosy two-seat cabin for example. Made-to-measure seats are offered in three different designs – pads stuck to the carbon tub, a shallow seat and a thicker version for smaller occupants. The seats are not adjustable but the steering wheel and pedal box are.
The switches on the removable steering wheel are available in different metal finishes, the carbon-fibre weave covering the dashboard can be tweaked, as can the tint. You can even colour-match the seat-belts and there are umpteem thousand interior upholstery materials, textural finishes and colours.
But there are no door handles inside the car — just leather pulls to save weight and space. We like that.
Colour me pretty
The guiding concept behind the development of the car was to save weight at every possible juncture and this is taken to the Nth degree. An optional Aston Martin badge on the front of the car weighs almost nothing and is just 15 microns thick, thinner than a human hair!
Just don’t ask how much that particular option is.
There are several options for the wheel designs and the exterior paint palette is extensive, as Meigh explains, showing us our carsales-themed black-on-blue finish. Indeed, the 150 owners can really go to town with the exterior finishes – and it seems many have.
Beyond being able to choose millions of colours, patterns, and custom graphics covering the carbon-fibre body panels of the car, customers can inject their own personal elements. One customer, for example, has taken a priceless moon rock, crushed it, and blended the moon dust into the paint.
Why? Wrong question. How about, why not?
There are some other options too, such as the track pack, and although Meigh is coy about the extra cost this incurs, she notes that ‘lots’ of customers have ticked the box.
The track pack adds the sort of aerodynamic addenda that makes the Batmobile look dull, not to mention titanium brakes, new suspension and magnesium alloy wheels with carbon-fibre aero-disc wheel covers to reduce drag.
Oh, and you get personalised pit garage accessories and race suits to match. Standard stuff, really.
The more aggressive (and interchangeable) track pack body panels will apparently deliver an eight per cent improvement in lap times over the ‘standard’ Valkyrie coupe, whose estimated 1000kg kerb weight, aerospace design and vociferous 865kW V12 engine should deliver a top speed of ‘lots’ and a 0-100km/h acceleration time of ‘I feel crook, let me out please’.
Virtually complete
After customers have a better idea of what options and features they’re interested in, they are thrust into the virtual world to look at the car from every angle with the help of VR goggles and a little laser gun thingy.
It’s far more engaging than just looking at your customised car on a computer monitor.
Then comes the payment…
Meigh was loathe to put an exact price on the carsales Aston Martin with its exposed carbon-fibre roof, bespoke interior fitout and track pack upgrade. My guess? We wouldn’t have much change from $6m.
Back in July 2016, when the wraps came off the Aston Martin RB 001 a vehicle that is today called the Aston Martin Valkyrie, there was cautious anticipation. It was touted as the most extreme road-legal hypercar ever conceived.
Turns out there was no need for cautious anticipation because as this machine approaches production readiness, it is set to break all sorts of records.
Its legacy will be considerable and seeing one in the wild will be like spotting a Tasmanian Tiger.
The Aston Martin Valkyrie is a cosmic supercar that bends the rules of physics, space and time. Fittingly, one of them has moon dust in it too.
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