New Land Rover Defender OCTA 2025 review: ferocious and graceful in equal measure

Verdict

If there’s another road car on sale with a broader range of abilities, we’ve yet to drive it. Monstrous off-road speed and capability is one thing, but to mate this with such towering on-road grace and refinement makes the Land Rover Defender OCTA unique in our experience. It’s expensive, yes – obscenely so on the surface – but the best things in life rarely come cheap, and of its type, the OCTA is the best there is.

Whether the world truly needs a 160 grand, 626bhp, twin-turbo V8 Defender that can climb mountains as nonchalantly as it can hit 60mph in under four seconds will forever be a point of contention. But for certain types – those with a lot of money to spend on a particular kind of toy – there is nothing quite like the Land Rover Defender OCTA. Not from Mercedes-AMG, not from Porsche or even Lamborghini. Not from anyone, anywhere, at any price.

As such, the OCTA is a vehicle some folks will feel they absolutely must have in order to stay one step ahead (although of who or what is less certain). Hence the reason the initial batch of Edition One versions – which cost £15k more than the regular £145,300 model and come with bespoke paint and a part-carbon-trimmed interior  – are all-but sold out. And that’s the version we test here.

Used - available now

2024 Land Rover

Defender

14,226 milesAutomaticPetrol2.0L

Cash £75,995

View Defender

2020 Land Rover

Defender

41,850 milesAutomaticDiesel2.0L

Cash £43,495

View Defender

2020 Land Rover

Defender

18,157 milesAutomaticDiesel2.0L

Cash £47,695

View Defender

2023 Land Rover

Defender

11,375 milesAutomaticDiesel3.0L

Cash £74,500

View Defender

It also helps explain why Defender sales have exploded recently, rising from 12,000 vehicles a year initially to 12,000 a month globally today. Buyers in this class can’t get enough of this most British of car brands, it seems, and right now the OCTA is in a league of one.

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Powered by a 4.4-litre BMW-sourced (but Land Rover-tuned) twin-turbo V8 that’s mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox with high and low transfer ranges, and riding on a heavily revised Defender 110 platform featuring ‘6D Dynamics’, the OCTA is a technical tour de force, as well as an icon of go-anywhere ability. Its creators claim it is the world’s fastest all-terrain SUV and judging from the spec sheet, it’s not too difficult to see why.

The chassis is hydraulically suspended and rides 28mm higher than a standard Defender’s to provide it with a far wider range of abilities off road. It can also be raised by a further 75mm to enable it to wade through deeper rivers than any Defender. The brakes, steering, wheels, tyres and entire suspension system have also been completely re-engineered to provide far sharper on-road responses, with three different tyre choices available depending how seriously you take your off-roading.

The majority of owners, we suspect, will opt for the more road-biased 22in all-season tyres from Michelin, on which the OCTA has a top speed of 155mph and can hit 60mph in a vaguely surreal 3.8sec (4.0sec dead to 62mph). But the most appropriate tyre to go for is surely the full-beans Goodyear All-Terrain, which is only available in a 20in size and reduces the top speed to 100mph but is the only option that fully unlocks this car’s almighty abilities – both on and off road. Hence why the launch vehicles we drove came on this tyre, even though it makes on-road handling a little fuzzier, which can be amusing in itself with 626bhp and 750Nm beneath your right foot.

Inside, the Land Rover Defender OCTA features many bespoke details to distinguish it above and beyond the regular Defender, with which it still shares its basic cabin architecture (same central touchscreen, same basic instrument layout, albeit with bigger numbers on display). The headline upgrade is the seats, which are massively more supportive than those of a regular Defender and also feature ‘Body and Soul’ audio technology. This, says the PR bumpf, allows you to ‘feel as well as hear the music’ and includes ‘six different wellness programmes to help relax occupants and improve their cognitive responses on the move’. They have an optional massage program, in other words.

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Either way, the OCTA is a deeply compelling vehicle just to be in, let alone drive, although the extra ride height is noticeable from the moment you try to climb aboard – or step out – and realise just how much higher the whole car sits. 

Once ensconced behind the OCTA’s big chunky steering wheel, the sense of majesty it emits is palpable. Even before you press the starter button it feels like a deeply special car to be inside, with supreme all-round vision mainly because you sit so high and can see over most other vehicles. The rear-view mirror, on the other hand, will come as a shock because the view it provides is that of a camera, not a conventional mirror reflection, because most of the rear screen is covered in a great big spare tyre.

Thumb the starter button and the M5-derived V8 doesn’t explode into life with a burst of wild revs but, instead, just starts, simple as that. It’s quiet enough not to wake the neighbours, if indeed you have neighbours as an OCTA owner. There are just three main drive modes to choose from; Comfort All Terrain (which is the default), Dynamic and OCTA. 

If you then venture off road there are all sorts of other sub-modes you can dial up to put the suspension, gearbox and drivetrain in the optimum settings for your chosen terrain. These range from ‘mud ruts’ to ‘sand’ to ‘rock climbing’ and even include a bespoke mode for wading through water, in which the exhaust valves close when reverse is selected to prevent the V8 from ingesting water when going backwards. Whatever scenario you can think of, treble it in terms of severity and/or ridiculousness and the OCTA has it covered. With jam and clotted cream on top.

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We drove it for a good 120 miles on some of the UK’s best roads up in the boarders between Newcastle and Edinburgh, on which it was every inch as fast and refined as a Range Rover Sport but with an extra edge to its dynamics (steering, brakes, engine, gearbox, handling, you name it) that made it even more engaging to drive. And later in the day we drove it along a river-bed, up the side of a mountain that even a regular Defender couldn’t climb, and across a violent rally stage at speeds that would surely have smashed most full blown rally cars to pieces.

To say it has range feels like a wild and inappropriate understatement. On the road the OCTA is a fantastically fast and entertaining SUV that’s also extraordinarily refined. In Dynamic mode it also makes a noise and has a clarity of purpose that will completely blow your mind. True, it needs a fair bit of space in which to operate and drinks a crazy amount of fuel – we average just 12mpg on test – but beyond this it’s an unbelievably well sorted road car.

Yet at the press of a button it can also do things off-road in OCTA mode that will fray the very edges of your imagination. However good you think it might be in the mud, think again, and you still won’t be anywhere near close.

For those who can afford it, the Land Rover Defender OCTA really is the ultimate on-off-road toy. It’s a sensational machine in just everything it does on the move and is also a lovely thing just to travel in. No wonder they can’t build them fast enough. And no wonder Defender, the brand, is going places in such a hurry.