I visited Aston Martin HQ to configure an £850,000 Valhalla supercar

Who knew configuring your own £850,000 supercar could be so stressful? That was the primary question on my mind as I stepped out of Aston Martin’s bespoke ‘configuration pod’, into the late-afternoon sun of an unseasonably warm spring day, and back to reality.

I’m lucky enough to drive and write about exotic cars for my job, and like many car lovers, I’ve spent countless hours tinkering with online configurators, certain of the specification I’d pick if my lottery numbers finally came up. So when Aston Martin invited me to visit its Gaydon headquarters and spend an hour or so designing my perfect Valhalla, I leapt at the opportunity. I thought – delusionally, I now realise – that reeling off the perfect spec would be as quick and easy as reciting the alphabet.

How wrong I was. The three-hour drive home was one filled with doubt. Had I chosen the right combination of paint colour, carbon finish, livery, wheels, brake callipers, badges, exhaust tips, interior upholstery and seat belt design? Impossible to say without starting the entire process again. Had I been too conservative with my choices? Almost certainly.

To be clear, no one on Earth should feel sorry for ultra-wealthy customers caught between two shades of blue. But when there’s so much choice on offer – some 74 paint options for Valhalla, before you reach for the big red telephone and give Q a call – there’s a certain pressure to get it right. And yes, that really is the name of Aston Martin’s in-house customisation department, which can create any colour you like, among other bespoke requests. But no, I made up the bit about the telephone.

Every customer ordering one of the 999 Valhallas Aston Martin plans to build is offered the experience I had. The company has identical configuration pods in several locations around the world, including the US and Japan. But Aston’s biggest fans will surely see the value in coming to the UK mothership.

Each configuration pod is kitted out with a wall full of colour samples, leather swatches, badges, callipers and other components. Bespoke tailored luggage too, of course, and samples demonstrating how the carbon fibre of your car can be tinted various colours. Helpfully, Aston Martin offers pre-configured palettes to help guide you; bodywork, interior and component samples of complementing colours laid out like the world’s most expensive bento box.

You could pick one of these and be done. Aston says some customers are in and out in 20 minutes, while others take up the entire three-hour session and some return frequently until locking in their perfect spec.

Opposite the sample wall is an absolutely enormous computer screen. It takes up the entire wall, measures 7.5 by 2.8 metres and is made up of 150 LED panels, each outputting 5K resolution. You can literally feel the heat it generates when you enter the room, and the car it displays is practically life-sized. The screen is controlled by one of Aston’s “brand specialists,” whose taps and swipes on an Android tablet instantly change your virtual car. The system uses a videogame engine to render lifelike graphics and actually runs in a web browser, rather than on a beefy PC tucked under the eight-seat table.

You can view your car in a virtual studio as you go through the configuration process, or see how it looks in various real-world locations. These include the Scottish Highlands (inspired by Skyfall, naturally), California, Tokyo, Las Vegas, New York and the Amalfi Coast, among others. It all looks very pretty, but since paint colours vary by ambient lighting, it serves a purpose too.

I settled on a paint colour called Caribbean Blue Pearl 2, which the configurator tells me was a popular choice in the 1960s and made famous by actor Peter Sellers and his DB5 convertible. I paired this with one of the more subtle of six liveries (the white details on some of the edges of the exterior carbon), a set of forged magnesium wheels in a colour called textured titanium, black brake callipers, clear glazing and titanium exhaust tips.

Inside, the subtlety continues with semi aniline leather in a black called Phantom Grey and a shade of blue called Dark Knight. I then opted for forged carbon fibre with a satin finish for the doors and centre console, a black steering wheel with Alcantara, stitching in Light Argento Metallic and “Interior Jewellery” in Satin Silver. I think that’s the air vents and door handles.

Q wasn’t available on the day I visited, but had I wanted to go even further (and beyond what the configuration software offers) I could have chosen any paint colour imaginable, or even had the bodywork and interior matched to samples of other objects. Seats to match a favourite leather bag, for example. Paintwork to match all the other hypercars in my garage, perhaps. I asked about titanium gear shifters and air vents, but was told I’ll need to contact Q for help with that.

Examples of what Q can do include paint that fades in or out along the length of the car, custom wheel colours, and bespoke liveries. You can expect to see some of the 999 Valhallas built to resemble historic race car liveries from Aston Martin's back catalogue, along with plenty using James Bond silver and F1 racing green. Custom colours of anodised switchgear is another Q option, along with a tinted and fully-exposed carbon body.

Looking back now, I wish I’d switched the exterior carbon from gloss twill to the same forged satin finish as the interior, and perhaps I should have been more bold with the sombre seats. A set of tweed samples looked great, and I’m told a fair few Valhalla customers agree, but that’s also a Q option so isn’t loaded into the configurator.

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The worst bit though, is the realisation I won’t be doing this again. Yes, it came with a larger side-order of pressure than I was expecting.

But it was also great fun. I kept sitting forward in my chair, leaning on the desk, hand stroking chin as I deliberated over the smallest details. Do I really want black brake callipers? Have I properly considered how a set of gold details in the headlights – which cannot be changed or removed – sit alongside the rest of the car? It’s a minefield, but one I’d happily dance through again in a heartbeat.