You’ll need to wear noise-cancelling headphones to drive your Valkyrie

We already know that the Aston Martin Valkyrie is immensely, obscenely and brilliantly loud, but CEO Tobias Moers recently told TG that the noise in the cabin would be around the 126 decibel mark, meaning customers will need to wear noise-cancelling headphones when driving. 

Moers said that all Valkyrie buyers were “okay with that”, which is good news. Presumably none were expecting their Adrian Newey-designed, Cosworth 6.5-litre V12-engined hypercar to be a quiet cruiser. For reference, on most decibel scales a jet taking off ranks around 120 decibels. 

The Valkyrie’s engine is structural and bolted directly to the chassis, and Moers admitted that the noise couldn’t be reduced any further. Would you really want it to be, though? The noise just makes the Valkyrie even cooler, and you’ll look like a fighter pilot in your headphones and cramped little cockpit. Plus, the oil pump Aston is using for the engine is actually from an Apache helicopter, so there’s a genuine (if slightly tenuous) link there.
 
Aston has delivered 10 Valkyries to customers so far, with seven being road cars and three track-only AMR Pros. 

Big boss Lawrence Stroll recently told TG: “Valkyrie is an insane car for anybody to have undertaken. I’ve got a Formula 1 team, and it’s harder to build this car than an F1 car.  A Formula 1 team has 800 people to build five cars a year, this is a harder car to build. There’s been nothing like it before, and I promise you there will be nothing like it again.

“I’m very proud that Aston Martin did this. No other OEM would take this on.

“When we started to build it I had to realise that we couldn’t use people from our production line, and I moved people from my Formula 1 team here to build it. That was not originally planned. It’s extremely complexed, but we’re building them. We’re getting them out the door.”