The Aston Martin Valkyrie, co-developed with Red Bull Advanced Technologies, has been a long time coming. First revealed in 2017, at one point the hypercar was slated to compete in endurance racing as a Le Mans Hypercar. But then rules changed, Mercedes-Benz took a sizable chunk of shares in the British automaker and the brand entered Formula 1 as a competitor to Red Bull and suddenly, the relationship between the two partners seemed less than rosy.
But rest assured, the Valkyrie and its 11,000-RPM Cosworth V12 are still on their way. The first examples should be reaching customers right now, based on a timetable Aston relayed back in February. However, the Valkyrie you’ve seen may not be the only one the company plans to launch.
A tipster sent Jalopnik a screenshot of the Aston Martin website showing a rendering of a Valkyrie — albeit one with quite a bit more downforce than the standard car, and even still a radically different aero kit from the AMR Pro version.
Note the title of the tab and header on the webpage, marked “Private Area” and “Customer Confidential.” We’re told this is a Valkyrie variant the company is planning to unveil later in the year. Maybe it’s an updated AMR Pro, maybe it’s something entirely different. We reached out to Aston Martin, and a spokesperson simply told us the company doesn’t “comment on speculation or future product plans.”
From this single image alone, we can see a number of changes from the “ordinary” Valkyrie. Of course, there’s that very dramatic wing at the rear — a wing higher, swoopier and larger than the AMR Pro’s. That comes bundled with the appropriate shark fin over the engine cover.
The front fenders have been revised with a steeper, larger cutaway from the rest of the body, while the splitter droops down from the center of the nose, sort of like the regular Valkyrie’s, but appears to project further. The shrouded turbofan-like wheels complete the transformation.
The result is an even more aggressive take on Aston’s already aggressive flagship. The Valkyrie, much like Toyota’s GR Super Sport and the AMG Project One, feels like a hypercar from a bygone era, when manufacturers built homologation specials for their most advanced racing machines. Unlike Toyota, Aston and Mercedes won’t send their track-focused hypercars to battle at Le Mans, though vehicles like this yet-unnamed special Valkyrie remind us exactly where they belong.