When Aston Martin and the Red Bull Racing Formula One team announced they were collaborating on a supercar, the only downside seemed to be its name. Until now, the joint effort has been known as the AM-RB 001, a pretty sterile-sounding name for something so exciting.
Aston has now rectified that. The AM-RB 001 will be known as the Valkyrie, the automaker says. In Norse mythology, Valkyries carry the honored dead off the battlefield to the warrior’s paradise of Valhalla. If they used cars, it would be hard t0 think of a better choice than this bonkers Aston.
The Valkyrie is expected to be a hybrid, with a 6.5-liter V12 from race-engineering firm Cosworth, and a battery system from Croatian firm Rimac, maker of the 1,088-horsepower Concept One electric supercar. Aston claims the AM-RB 001 will have a power-to-weight ratio of 1:1, meaning it will have one horsepower for every kilogram of weight. Trick aerodynamics will give it race-car-like downforce on the track, and the car will have a carbon-fiber chassis constructed by motor sports firm Multimatic.
Aston’s choice of “Valkyrie” as the name for what may be its most insane creation yet continues a tradition of “V” names that dates back to the original Vantage, which debuted in 1951 as a higher-performance version of the DB2. That tradition is also apparent today in the current Vantage, the Vanquish, and the recent limited-edition Vulcan track car.
The Valkyrie will be built at the same facility in Gaydon, England, that built the Aston Martin One-77 supercar. Engineering work will be shared by Aston’s Q personalization division and Red Bull Advanced Technologies. Aston and Red Bull plan to build both road-going and track versions of the Valkyrie, and boast that the track version will have performance comparable to an LMP1 Le Mans prototype race car.
Only 150 Valkyries will be built, including 25 track versions and a handful of prototypes. Deliveries will begin in 2019, and the price tag is rumored to be around $3 million per car.
