Short of it being a sales disaster, there was always going to be a V8 Defender. There was the heritage for one thing, and the international market to consider - and Land Rover had made space for its supercharged engine from day one. But something like the OCTA, a 635hp halo-wearing, off-road Goliath in a segment mostly filled with simpering Davids, was at the very most a glint in SVO’s eye when the car launched in 2019.
Land Rover had shown the Discovery SVX in Frankfurt exactly two years earlier: a 525hp V8-powered, hydraulically-restrained vision of what the family-friendly SUV could be if you jettisoned some of the friendliness and fitted proper all-terrain tyres. A certain sort of enthusiast briefly clamoured for it, but truthfully the pumped-up derivative never came near the glow of Land Rover’s green light. Why would it? Defender was coming.
Thank goodness it did. The SVX, mostly thanks to the original design choices made with Discovery 5, looked like a yoga mum in crampons; the Defender OCTA (let’s not dwell on the name, it’s silly; forget about it), especially in Faroe Green, looks very much like you might be scouring the Surrey Hills for mobile Scud launchers. It is hardly the first time the manufacturer has leaned its shoulder into what watchmakers like to call the ’tactical’ end of the market - the original Defender virtually kickstarted the whole concept - but never before has Land Rover been quite so laser-focused about what features underneath. Nor attempted to charge quite so much for it.
Initially, it had intended to boil all this off-road ambition down into a chippy, thumb-biting slogan: the world’s fastest all-terrain SUV, or something along those lines - but found it had no way of benchmarking such a claim (clearly, entering the Dakar Rally in 2026 is the next best thing). Benchmarking in general proved tricky; Land Rover claims to have ‘broken’ a Mercedes-AMG G63 and Ford Ranger Raptor during development. And while a custom-built and virtually indestructible Bowler was justly considered an outlier, the team tried out one of those, too, just to see what motorsport-grade kit earned you.
Suffice it to say, then, the OCTA, and the whole notion of rally raid-style performance, was something for Land Rover to get its head around. The fact that Matt Becker, JLR’s vastly experienced vehicle dynamics boss, had to be briefly tutored in the business of going fast on gravel, rather says it all. As a result, you, in turn, will need a moment to get your head around the car that has resulted. Because while the earlier V8-powered Defender was about as hard to get to grips with as room-temperature silly putty, the OCTA takes the firm’s bestseller to a swifter, edgier, and dramatically more capable place, as it promised - but not without a price.
You won’t need to go to South Africa to experience the latter, though that’s where Land Rover conducted the international launch, based on the country’s convenient mix of made and unmade roads. The firm did something very similar with the standard Defender back in 2019, where Namibia provided the pinch-me backdrop. Back then we dwelt on the manufacturer’s choice of continent; one that wholly favours Toyota (or another Japanese brand mimicking Toyota) when it comes to choosing a hardy off-roader. Anecdotally, that appeared no less true on this visit - and yet it seems a little less pertinent now Land Rover is flat-out selling around 12,000 Defenders a month globally.
Some at Land Rover expressed surprise at the way 2,000 of its customers have launched themselves at the £160k First Edition OCTA with very little run-up (the first buyers are primed to receive their cars on the same Monday the review embargo drops) although presumably the globe-trotting preview event helped - not least because the flagship has square-jawed physical presence to spare. Yes, it’s a size thing: the OCTA is 28mm taller and 68mm wider than standard, but it’s also a wheel and tyre thing - the car looking better than it ever has on new 20-inch rally-inspired wheels and giant, knobbly all-terrain tyres.
Given the use case implications, the choice of rubber is worth recapping. Land Rover has developed three options for OCTA buyers: a new all-season Michelin Primacy that is good for 155mph and comes exclusively on much more bling-looking 22-inch alloys; a BF Goodrich Trail Terrain tyre that is rated up 130mph and is standard on the 20-inch forged wheels; and, for the first time on a series production Land Rover, a three-ply Goodyear Duratrac RT Advanced All-Terrain tyre specially developed for off-road performance, but limited to 100mph on asphalt. As you might expect, all the UK-plate, right-hand-drive cars available to drive in South Africa were all equipped with the latter.
With a rolling diameter of 33 inches, the OCTA’s tyres are so large they required both axles to be nudged forward a few millimetres. Beyond the dramatic increase in track widths, the chassis itself has been extensively modified and heavily shielded: Land Rover has swapped out or uprated the control arms, links, knuckles and dampers - and fitted the biggest brakes yet seen on a Defender. You still get height-adjustable air suspension, but the standard car’s anti-roll bars are gone completely, replaced by the 6D Dynamics system first seen on the Range Rover Sport SV, meaning the triple-valve, semi-active dampers are hydraulically interlinked by a maze of high-pressure pipework and calibrated to best suit whichever drive profile you’ve selected.
These get incrementally more interesting, although there’s no need to push the comically large steering wheel-mounted mode button to get a general sense of the OCTA’s next-level seriousness, nor locate any loose; it is as plain as the pushback on the flagship’s new Performance seats. Their reluctance to yield to your bodyweight in the usual Defender fashion is a tendency shared by the stockier, lean-resistant chassis, not to mention the stiffer sidewalls needed to better resist punctures. The contrast at the wheel is even more stark: the much faster 13.7:1 steering ratio making it clear from the get-go that Land Rover has willingly exchanged some of the Defender’s carefully measured waft for something far more bristly and keyed-up.
This much was to be expected (not least for our prior experience of the SV, which the OCTA’s undersides now closely resemble), although it is a measure of the standard model’s intuitiveness that for a good while on benign Cape Town roads, the difference between the two didn’t immediately seem like a boon to enjoyment. Some of that shortfall can be attributed to the engine bay: we knew coming in that the BMW-sourced (though JLR-modified) 4.4-litre V8 was superior to the 5.0-litre supercharged unit in any number of ways, but that raw mechanical charisma would not be among them. Even with a bespoke air intake and a four-exit, adaptively-valved exhaust, Land Rover has still not coaxed a particularly moreish soundtrack from the newcomer, particularly in its default Comfort setting.
Outright brawn, as you might imagine, is not in short supply - not in the 635hp at one extreme, nor the 553lb ft of torque available at the other - although you’ll need to go looking for it if you want to unlock 4.0-second-to-62mph performance. Even in its Dynamic mode, the OCTA doesn’t seem as rabid as some, although in being nearly a second and a half quicker than the previous V8-powered 110, it ought to be plenty quick enough for most. It gets the same eight-speed ZF automatic (with selectable high and low range transfer case), although this has been treated to a new stiffened cradle alongside beefed-up propshafts, driveshafts and differentials to safely handle what Land Rover says is 68 per cent increase in axle torque. With a crank-integrated starter generator and 48-volt battery supplying mild-hybrid assistance, the snappy straight-line speed needed to underwrite the OCTA’s leaner change of direction is hardly in question. But that doesn’t mean it all clicks together without some persuading.
This ultimately comes in stages - or it did in South Africa. Land Rover’s carefully planned route took us into the Cederberg Wilderness Area; 71,000 hectares of rugged, mountainous terrain and signposts warning you about leopards. In summer, not all of the region's dirt roads require a 4x4 to make good progress, although it’s the sort of place that makes you appreciate a good one nonetheless. The OCTA’s standard-fit Terrain Response provides its driver with familiar options when leaving civilisation behind - Grass/Gravel/Snow, Mud and Ruts, Sand and Rock Crawl - all of them reconfigured to work with the 6D system, the V8’s higher output and the car’s improved wheel articulation.
Granted, there is no version of the Defender that wouldn’t make short work of such an invitingly dusty backdrop - yet it doesn’t take long for the OCTA’s modifications to start to seem like strengths. Unlike its more adventurous settings, Grass/Gravel/Snow favours a 50/50 torque split, while allowing a judicious amount of slip under the guidance of a fairly leisurely throttle map - the result is meant to seem friendly and easy to manage at speed, and it does. But the OCTA’s sharper steering plays a leading role here, too, allowing you to delicately adjust the car’s angle with minimal input, and taking full advantage of a more immediate and meatier connection with the road surface. For all the moments when it seemed like a standard V8 might be easier going over ruts, the OCTA returns ten where you relish its superior sense of control.
In other words, without trying too hard, there is a lovely groove to find on fast, flowing gravel tracks - one that belies the Defender’s size and its two-and-a-half-tonne kerbweight. Even better, in full-on OCTA mode, which Land Rover preserved for a few laps of a much tighter makeshift circuit, trying a good deal harder causes that groove to deepen exponentially. Party because the torque bias now favours the rear axle by as much as 85 per cent and the V8 gets uncorked in a way that ought to appeal to your inner Baja racer, but mainly because you start to realise just how clever the 6D Dynamics system is, even when faced with abrupt gradient changes, at finding the sweet spot between roll stiffness and damper control - the resulting pliancy and positive turn-in feeling almost organic, which in turn makes the OCTA’s plumbed-in adjustability seem endlessly approachable.
Moreover, it does all this without jiggling your head from your shoulders, a quality impressed upon PH by Becker in his ‘hot lap’ setting - despite retaining the same roll centre as the standard Defender (which required some additional fettling of the taller model to achieve) one of the OCTA’s core achievements is suppressing the head toss that would otherwise make fast off-roading in something so high-sided intolerable. This isn’t to say that you aren’t being jostled (you are), but only insofar as it seems compelling and ultimately fitting for the speed being carried - and, indeed, for the terrific amount of punishment the car is absorbing on your behalf. Technically speaking, with its approach and departure angles again improved, the OCTA was no less impressive when asked to complete a fairly senior rock crawl a day later - but had Land Rover simply parachuted us into northern Mexico and pointed us toward La Paz, it would’ve heard no complaints. Not from PH at least.
And certainly not after two very pleasant hours spent at Lambert’s Bay, churning up sand on 250 hectares of absurdly pretty dunes. For the uninitiated, even with another super-clever drive mode to aid you and 20psi ushered out of the Goodyears, there’s an art to this style of off-roading, most of it in the throttle. That we did not get stuck in so much talcum powder can mostly be attributed to Land Rover’s instructor, the sensational tyres and the ready availability of so much torque. It is probably enough to say that the OCTA, with three blokes in it - i.e. getting on for three tonnes - seemed no more overawed by the challenge than it had anywhere else.
There are only so many times a car can save your skin before it starts to get truly under it. By the time we returned to asphalt, bound for Cape Town airport, any lingering reservations about the way the OCTA’s heightened dynamism plays out on the road had begun to seem like meaningless quibbles when set against its remarkable bandwidth. That the Goodyears requires a compromise in performance (rolling refinement included) is a fact readily acknowledged by Land Rover, and it will be interesting to see what the car is like on its quieter, grippier Michelins back in the UK. Either way though, it feels like new ground has been broken: the Defender was arguably the world’s best off-roader already - the OCTA removes any possibility of argument by elevating the car into a class of one, certainly among its European rivals. Even more satisfyingly, that doesn’t necessarily make it the best Defender for you: the niche it occupies is no more roomy than the one containing a Porsche 911 GT2 RS. For the right person, perfection. For everyone else, a 110 D350 makes it seem like overkill. Brilliant, awe-inspiring, overkill.
SPECIFICATION | 2025 LAND ROVER DEFENDER OCTA
Engine: 4,395cc twin-turbo V8, mild-hybrid
Transmission: 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 635
Torque (lb ft): 553 (590 with launch control)
0-62mph: 4.0 seconds
Top speed: 155mph (all-terrain tyres limited to 100mph)
Weight: 2,585kg (EU)
MPG: 21.0 (WLTP)
CO2: 304g/km (WLTP)
Price: £160,800 for Edition One; £145,300 for OCTA
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