Gordon Ramsay Struggles With His Aston Martin Valhalla's Door

Gordon Ramsay pulled up to London’s Savoy Hotel in a brand-new £1 million Aston Martin Valhalla, and then couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. The 59-year-old chef left his wife Tana waiting inside the hybrid hypercar while he wrestled with the car’s handle-less dihedral door.

A Million-Dollar Door Problem

Video captured by photographer and car enthusiast Freddie Atkins showed Ramsay visibly unsure how to release the door mechanism, at one point asking for the vehicle’s manual while he worked through the unfamiliar controls. Tana stayed seated inside as he tried to sort it out, and at one point he resorted to knocking on the window before finally getting the door open. Once he’d sorted it out, Ramsay greeted Atkins and shook hands with the hotel’s doormen before heading inside.

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Why the Door Isn’t Actually a Simple Thing

To be fair to Ramsay, the Valhalla’s doors aren’t exactly intuitive. The car was developed with input from Formula One designer Adrian Newey and is considered the successor to the Valkyrie, Aston Martin’s first hybrid supercar. It pairs a V8 with three electric motors for a combined 1,064 horsepower and 811 lb-ft of torque, enough to hit 60 mph in 2.5 seconds and reach a top speed of 217 mph. A car engineered around that level of aerodynamic and performance obsession isn’t exactly designed with everyday convenience as the top priority, and deliveries of the highly anticipated model had already faced delays before reaching customers like Ramsay.

A Big Few Months for the Ramsay Family

The Savoy appearance came not long after Ramsay opened up about his daughter Holly’s December wedding to Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty. He’s said he considers Peaty a son and described the ceremony at Bath Abbey as an emotional occasion for the whole family. Door troubles aside, Ramsay has since taken full delivery of the Valhalla and has been spotted driving it around central London following that first eventful stop at the hotel.

Shawn Henry

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Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them. He's the type who'll notice the weird trim option nobody remembers and actually know why it mattered. At Backfire News, he covers pretty much the whole spectrum: off-road trucks and trail builds, performance cars, racing, and the collector market. He's comfortable getting into the technical weeds, but he never forgets that most people read about cars because cars are fun, not because they want a spec sheet. His beat runs from classic and collector vehicles to overlanding culture, modified performance builds, new automotive tech, and the industry news that actually affects what ends up in your driveway. Mostly, though, Shawn thinks the best car stories are about people—the builds they pour money into, the road trips, the communities that form around a shared obsession. That's the stuff he likes writing about, and it's what you'll find in his work here.

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