Hyper cars from the world's most iconic manufacturers are all well and good, but we only get really interested in them if they can be driven on the road, even though most of us will never be able to afford one. Hearing about the latest Le Mans car is mildly interesting, but a Porsche 918 or a McLaren P1 really gets us excited.
That's why it's such a big deal Aston Martin has just revealed information and images of a more production-ready version of the Valkyrie, which is the hyper car the British manufacturer has been teasing us with for the last couple of years.
Until now the car has gone under the codename RB-001, but the legendary British sports car builder has now caved in and started officially referring to the car as the Valkyrie. This latest incarnation is a lot closer to being a genuine retail offering as it now features such road-going luxuries as headlights and taillights, a fully finished interior with a steering wheel, seats and instrumentation, and also a few aerodynamic tweaks.
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Of course, to add all the features needed to turn a track-focused prototype into a road-legal car also means adding a great deal of weight, which in turn would have an adverse effect on performance, and that's not desirable. In order to minimize the amount of extra weight, Aston Martin has gone to some extraordinary lengths.
For a start, the headlights are said to be as much as 30- to 40-percent lighter than those fitted to any existing Aston Martin.
Although the taillights are not especially remarkable in the grand scheme of things, the third brake light is pretty special. The manufacturer is claiming it to be the smallest ever made, and as it measures in at less than a quarter of an inch wide and four tenths of an inch tall, that's not a difficult claim to believe.
As if that weren't enough, Aston has also come to the conclusion that a normal company badge would also be too heavy, and a sticker just wouldn't be upmarket enough for the brand. So, the solution is a laser-etched aluminum badge that's just 70 microns thick. When you consider a human hair is around 100 microns thick, it really does put into perspective how far this obsession with weight-saving has gone.
When it does eventually go on sale, the limited run Valkyrie is expected to cost at least $3 million.
