Valen time

At least in theory. In reality, if you turned off the traction control and gave it a bootful, I imagine you’d be quite a lot older and substantially poorer before you made any meaningful progress at all. Still, it’ll amuse your friends and cheese off your neighbours, not that many in a position to spend £1.5 million on such a device are likely to have anything as style-cramping as neighbours.

Pay some attention to these pictures, though as is usual with images shot in studios under artificial light, they only give an impression of the car’s true appearance. Some cars shot in such circumstances can end up looking like pantomime dame versions of their real selves and, while that’s not the case here, I’ve been to see the Valen, outside in natural light, and its shape is even more purposeful and, above all, interesting than these pictures suggest. It is, to these eyes at least, the meanest-looking Aston since the Vulcan and while I’m not sold on every little detail – those sills look somewhat contrived to me – taken as a whole, it is an imposing, determined and, in its own rather brutal way, very good-looking Aston Martin.

But nor is it some mere styling study, a Vanquish in fancy duds out for a night on the town. It’s far more interesting than that.

Its true purpose is revealed at least in part when you realise that it’s 110kg lighter than what Aston Martin describes as its ‘core V12 platform’. Why it can’t just say ‘Vanquish’, because that’s the only other V12 the company makes, I’m not quite sure, but that would seem to me to reduce its weight to something around the 1720kg mark, or as little as 1610kg dry which, for something wearing a hulking great V12 whose roots can be traced back to the last century but which has had its output almost exactly doubled since it made its debut in the 420bhp DB7 Vantage in 1997, is going some.

It’s been achieved through myriad methods, though predominately thanks to the use of carbon fibre for the body, front bulkhead, sills, roof and rear deck. The wheels are magnesium, the exhausts titanium, while much of the interior, such as the centre console and door cards, are 3D-printed.

However, Aston Martin insists the Valen is not a car best suited to the race track, but is instead a driver-focused, supremely sporting GT.

To that end, it actually uses the gearbox from the Vantage GT4 race car, plus a whole host of other ‘refinements’ to spice up the experience beyond what you’d find in the scarcely dull Vanquish, over and above the fact it’s that much lighter. The engine not only has more power, it has sharper throttle mapping, and the new exhausts make it 50 per cent louder, which can likely be summarised as ‘bloody loud’.

The Bilstein semi-active DTX dampers have been tuned accordingly, the Pirellis are bespoke to the car, the ESP and steering have received new software to make the car feel more playful, while the suspension geometry has been rethought to make the car sharper on turn-in.

A comprehensive job, then, as indeed it should be for this kind of money. If there’s a disappointment, it’s the absence of a manual gearbox, just at a time when both Ferrari and McLaren seem to be re-embracing three-pedal transmissions. Aston Martin says that after the Valour and Valiant, that idea is ‘played out’ for them, at least for now.

The Aston Martin Valen made its debut on Friday at Monterey Car Week and the first of its hopefully 150 customers will start to receive their cars in Q2 2027.