The Aston Martin Valhalla is a hell of a machine. Its twin-turbocharged V8 motor is teamed with three electric motors to produce a total of 1,064 horsepower sent to all four wheels. That’s all well and good, but it’s not what grabbed my attention about the car today. No, sir. What I’m interested in is how fast it can go backwards.
When running in reverse, the Valhalla doesn’t use its V8 or 8-speed dual-clutch transmission. Instead, the plug-in-hybrid supercar goes backwards with the help of the electric motors it uses to drive the front wheels. When driving forward, those motors can spin the wheels up to 87 mph, which means they could do the exact same thing in reverse. Unfortunately, Aston decided that’s dangerous or whatever, so its engineers threw a reverse speed limiter on the thing, according to Australia’s Drive. If Aston were really cool, it would quote a reverse 0-to-60 time, but alas it hasn’t.
I’m really not a believer in the idea that woke culture and the nanny state are ruining our society, but I do think those keyboard warriors might have a point when I see things like this. Because of woke, the reverse top speed of the Valhalla is a cuck-certified 18.6 mph. I can walk faster than that.
Beating the mind virus
While it’s a damn shame the Valhalla can’t reach near “Back to the Future” speeds in reverse, some car companies still know a thing or two about how to have fun. A couple of years ago, we told you about how Rimac set a new top speed record in reverse with its all-electric Nevera hypercar. The 1,900-hp beast was able to hit a Guinness World Record-certified 171.34 mph in reverse, which is just absurd. Really, there’s no better way to see someone in Valhalla than to drive backwards above 170 mph. What’s even better about this record is that it was done as a sort of goof, according to Rimac:
“It occurred to us during development that Nevera would probably be the world’s fastest car in reverse, but we kind of laughed it off. The aerodynamics, cooling and stability hadn’t been engineered for travelling backwards at speed, after all. But then, we started to talk about how fun it would be to give it a shot. Our simulations showed that we could achieve well over 150mph but we didn’t have much of an idea how stable it would be – we were entering unchartered territory,” Matija Renic, Nevera chief program engineer, said.
Listen, I know the Valhalla is a hell of a machine, and a 217-mph top speed and 2.5-second 0-to-60 time are nothing to sneeze at. I just wish it wasn’t so slow in this one very specific regard.
