ASTON MARTIN VALKYRIE
That’s it, everyone can go home. The Valkyrie’s V12 – and this spec – will not be bettered
When I met Adrian Newey to discuss the Valkyrie back in summer 2017, something he said lodged in my brain like a fish hook: that the 12-into-one exhaust system, rather than two six-into-ones, “makes it sound like it’s revving twice as high as it actually is.” For an engine we now know red-lines at 11,100rpm, that’s quite a claim. Probably why I’m standing in a dingy corridor somewhere in the Cosworth factory (the acoustic sweet spot, I’m told) with my ear pressed against a cold steel door, and mildly fearful of what’s about to be awoken on the dyno the other side.
What occurs is a sound every bit as pure and piercing as we’d prayed for. A sound impossible not to compare to F1’s manic 18,000rpm V10 era. In fact, listen closely as you lose yourself down a YouTube wormhole, and it’s Senna’s Honda V12 from the 1991 MP4/6 that it most closely emulates in tone and ferocity. Anyway, you get the idea – it’s special. The most special sound I’ve heard from a road car engine… ever. Heartening news for the 150 customers awaiting delivery of their £2.5m investments, from the tail end of this year.
Developed by Cosworth from a blank screen in a little over two years, it’s a 6.5-litre, nat-asp V12 making 1,000bhp at 10,500rpm, and 546lb ft at 7,000rpm. Its red line potentially eclipses the AMG One’s 1.6-litre turbo V6 by a cheeky 100rpm, and will be augmented by an electric motor too, contributing a further 100bhp. Perhaps Cosworth’s greatest achievement, though, is keeping the weight of the engine down to just 206kg. For context, the One-77’s V12, itself a lightweight motor, weighs almost 80kg more.
The initial wish list in mid-2016 was to build a 6.0-litre producing 900bhp and weighing 200kg. The numbers have grown in the interim, which makes the story of how Cosworth made it stick all the more astonishing. Over to Bruce Wood, Cosworth’s MD, to explain the complexity of the task: “Most engines only have to contain the forces they generate themselves, but this is a fully structural element in the car. Take the engine out and there’s nothing holding the front and rear wheels together. To transmit all that downforce, all the cornering loads, everything, through the engine architecture, contain 1,000bhp and deliver 200kg, is a huge challenge.”
But one you get the impression Bruce and his team live for. So how do you simultaneously strengthen and lighten? “It’s all in the detail. The cam covers for example, we budgeted six weeks of analysis. It was probably more like two man years by the time we finished. If we hadn’t worried about putting another 2kg on them, it would have been easy.”
The driving force behind these seemingly impossible targets? Adrian Newey of course, the man who, on seeing the finished engine’s lacquered plenum, pulled a face. Here was 30g that could be saved, which is why customers will be able to order their engines with or without a shiny coat. Too anal? Perhaps, but it’s Newey’s forensic attention to detail that has taken this project to places untravelled. “This is Adrian’s modus operandi,” says Bruce. “He sets you a target which is more than you can deliver, and only when he’s content that you’ve applied every bit of engineering resource and knowledge you and he can think of does he agree it’s done.”
So, how do you land on a 11,100rpm red line and peak power at a punchy 10,500rpm? Another Newey stipulation from the get-go, surely? Not so, says Bruce, “That came from us.” Newey was keen for the engine to be high-revving of course, because F1, but the final number was dictated by the performance targets. “With a normally aspirated engine, you only have capacity and revs to play with, so it was inevitable we would end up north of 10,000rpm. And in early testing, we realised 1,000bhp was within our grasp.”
By “early testing”, Bruce is referring to a quarter-scale, 3cyl test engine built to check emissions and power were on track. “We took a 4cyl of our own design, chopped a cylinder off, made a special cylinder head and replicated the combustion system, valve actuation and engine speed. Because we delivered 250bhp out of that, we knew we’d be fine.” If any manufacturer is looking for an 11,000rpm, 250bhp, 3cyl for its next hot hatch, give Cosworth a call.
It’s become de rigueur these days to label any new, nat-asp engine – V12s especially – as the last of their type. I won’t fall into that trap – given the augmentation to power, torque and economy figures electric motors offer – but this engine, in this car, has the feel of a once-in-alifetime event. Bruce agrees: “Whether anybody ever does another one, who can tell? But in our view, this is the pinnacle of what you can achieve; nobody’s going to produce a more iconic V12 than this.”