For 113 years Aston Martin built its name on the front-engined grand tourer, the car that moves you before it moves. The Valhalla Coupe already tore up that script as the company's first series-production mid-engined supercar and its first plug-in hybrid. The Spider, revealed at the Concours at Wynn Las Vegas this week, does something quieter but arguably smarter: it takes the most technically ambitious car Aston has ever built and makes it the one you'd actually want to live with.
Nothing mechanical has changed, and that's the point. Under the carbon tub, co-developed with Aston Martin Performance Technologies (the consulting arm of the Aston Martin Aramco F1 team), sits the same flat-plane-crank 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 (a heavily reworked version of the Mercedes-AMG M178, with new heads, camshafts and bigger turbos) backed by three electric motors. Two drive the front axle for torque vectoring, one lives inside the eight-speed dual-clutch. Combined, that's 1,064hp (793kW) and 1,100Nm, fed by a 6.1kWh battery. The numbers match the Coupe: 0 to 100km/h in 2.5 seconds, 350km/h flat out.
Here's the part that surprises. Aston hasn't capped the Spider to protect the structure. With the optional carbon hardtop fitted, or with the roof removed entirely, you get the full 350km/h. Only with the standard fabric roof in place does it drop to 200km/h. So the fastest open-top production car the company has ever made is at its quickest with the wind in your hair, not sheltered from it.
The detail work is where the Spider justifies itself. The engine snorkel has been re-profiled and raised 35mm, a wind deflector manages cockpit airflow while feeding that snorkel, and the active aero and ESP recalibrate on the fly for roof-on or roof-off running. New Touring seats make getting in and out of a car with a reclined, F1-style driving position far less of an event, with the Coupe's hardcore carbon buckets available at no cost for anyone who wants them. The frameless dihedral doors stay.
None of which settles the fair questions. The V8 traces back to the Mercedes-AMG GT, where Ferrari and McLaren build bespoke engines for cars at this money. The Coupe arrived heavier than its sub-1,550kg target. The battery is small enough that EV range is a rounding error. And the whole Valhalla project is five to six years late, landing in a segment the SF90 and Artura have had years to polish. Aston is playing catch-up while charging a premium, which only works if the execution is exceptional.
That premium is real. The Spider is expected to command roughly a 40 per cent premium over the Coupe (our estimate, with no official figure yet), putting it near £1.3 million in the UK, part of Aston's stated plan to lean on range-topping derivatives to lift margins.
It's slated to make up about a quarter of the 999-unit Valhalla run. Australia is confirmed for the Valhalla, with the Coupe informally pencilled at 'a tad under two million' before on-roads, enough to make it one of the most expensive new cars sold here. Spider pricing, allocation and local timing haven't been confirmed, though Gaydon's right-hand-drive production makes the car plausible here. Deliveries start globally in Q3 2027.
What the Spider nails is the Volante logic Aston has understood since the DB5: the open version is the emotional peak of the line. Only here it's wrapped around 793kW and a Formula 1 team's development data.
On paper, the case for this being the most usable, most dramatic way into the Valhalla is hard to argue with. Whether Aston can back a $2 million car across a 20-year ownership run is the question the spec sheet can't answer.
