At The Quail at Monterey Car Week, Aston Martin unveiled a surprisingly beautiful car that looks and feels different than most of the supercars on then lawn. It’s called the Valen, and it looks very cool.
Aston just unveiled the car, so I don’t have a ton of information yet. I do know it’s a front-mid-mounted V12, it’s rear-wheel drive, and makes 838 horsepower (850 PS).
More importantly, just look at it:
The grille isn’t quite what you’d expet from an Aston, but I think that’s OK. It’s an aggressive but also elegant looking supercar in a great color.
The interior… I’m not sure I quite love it. It’s maybe a bit gaudy. But the rest of it looks cool.
View this post on Instagram
Update: Looks like the embargo broke. Other sites are reporting that it’s a 5.2-liter connected to an eight-speed ZF automatic, and that there will only be 150 of the most powerful Aston Martin ever made (by the brand’s bespoke Q Division). Pricing is probably going to be well into the seven figures. It’s hardly an everyperson’s car, but it looks neat. That’s all I got; I’m off to find other cars that I can afford, which is to say, I’m surfing Marketplace. There’s some gold here in Monterey:
First, please ban the word “amazing” and others like it–“great”, “awful”, “horrible”, etc. Words like these have no emotional pull so don’t pull the reader in, which after, all is the purpose of a headline. For this article, how about “Aston Martin Abandons Tradition and Goes to the Dark Side”. Or maybe “Aston Martin Misplaces its French Curves in New Valen Design”. Or maybe “Aston’s New Valen: Unrecognizable”.
Which brings me to my second point: Aston Martins have (almost) always been beautiful, soulful, and recognizable as Aston Martins, even when they more recently moved to a more aggressive design language. This thing is a fucking mess–I won’t repeat what others here have said. I really hope Adrian does a design study and shows where they went awry, but I’m afraid he might decide it’s a lost cause, and who would blame him.
How about “Aston Martin returns to Ford history by stealing the front clip from a GTD.”
needs some “OU812” livery and personalized license plate of “HAN”
The front is giving off squashed Camaro/Mustang vibes all day long. The back, well where to begin? Where are your eyes supposed to land? Are those upper and lower exhausts? Where’s the actual bumper? How many different shapes colors did they use? Oy!
I’m waiting for the van version, the Van Valen. I’ll drive it down to Panama.
So a Mustang GTD and a Pantera then?
It’s like Aston looked at the Mustang GTD and said “hold my warm beer.”
I really don’t like what they’ve done to the classic Aston Martin grill on their more concepts / prototypes.
It looks like it’s aping the Polestar 5’s lack of a rear window, which kills any aspirations I might potentially have had.
I do not love the idea of having to refocus my eyes every time I check the rear view display “mirror”, although perhaps this is less of a problem in practice.
In addition, it is getting harder to see through car windows to evaluate threats on the far side. Opaque cargo vans exist for reasons, but the overtinted cars and the tall pickups are less necessary, and this sort of thing is right out.
Looks like a car from one of those free to play mobile games.
i was thinking Rocket League