Ground Control

Enough bimbling about on the road, let's take things up a notch shall we? Chris, light the afterburners

- By Chris Harris

NOT BEING A STUDENT OF WAGNER I HAVE NEVER REALLY UNDERSTOOD THE MEANING OF THE WORD VALKYRIE, nor the etymological connection to the extraordinary-looking vehicle you see before you now. Having driven it at Bahrain's F1 circuit I was rather hoping that it would be some wildly idiosyncratic beast which turned out to be rather different to what people might have expected.

Sadly the connection seems limited to it being an angry sounding word beginning, as is the Aston nomenclature, with a V. Because Valkyrie was actually the daughter of a god who protected some people. Art and cars rarely mix well.

I feel in some danger of trotting out the standard hypercar tester's handbook of excuses for this machine. It is monstrously late, hasn't ended up being entirely faithful to the original offering and under most circumstances I don't doubt a base Porsche 911 would allow its driver to travel faster. But the handbook insists that I ignore that rather fundamental fact. As we do for most hypercars because they are the chocolate fireguards of our world.

But doesn't it look fantastic? A futuristic amalgam of sci-fi angles and negative spaces. You walk around it wondering what bizarreness you'll see next. In some respects it could be argued that these cars are better left as static objects and maybe demonstrated by others so we can all hear them and see them scream past.