Hands-On with the 2025 Land Rover Defender OCTA
Looking for a car built to survive an apocalypse? The OCTA is probably it.
The latest Defender in Land Rover’s four-wheeled infantry is here – and it is quite something.
Ever since it was announced last summer, there’s been an endless buzz around the Land Rover Defender OCTA. And understandably so: it’s an SUV with a 635 horsepower, 4.4 litre, twin-turbo V8 engine that does 0-to-60 in 3.8-seconds, has a top speed of 155 mph and packs a massive 750 Nm of peak torque. But it feels like the hype around the new car isn’t simply down to its impressive on-paper specs – nor even because of the £160,800 GBP ($167,900 USD) price tag you’ll find on an “Edition One” model. Rather, five years on from the Defender’s 2020 relaunch, the Defender OCTA seems to mark an entirely new chapter in Land Rover’s decades long lore – a story started in 1948 in the middle of England where it remains anchored to this day, bolstered by over 114,000 annual Defender sales.
In recent weeks, those lucky enough to call themselves new owners of Land Rover’s latest car have began taking delivery of their vehicles – an exclusive bunch that includes Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, whose new OCTA bears his “Dubai 1” license plate. And this new OCTA owner club really is an exclusive one: while, as a group, Jaguar Land Rover sells over 500,000 cars a year, its new Defender’s contribution to this is set to be fractional – in the UK, for example, the company is capping the total number of OCTAs made to just 1,070 for the first year of its production.
Again, it’s understandable when you think about it: the 2025 Land Rover Defender OCTA isn’t your average SUV. It’s probably fair to say that it isn’t your average Land Rover Defender. In development for over three years, the OCTA was “subjected to the most extreme testing and development programme in Defender history,” according to Land Rover, with the company’s engineers putting it through “13,960 additional tests” on top of the existing “standard Defender testing regime”.
Indeed, the OCTA was designed to take Land Rover’s off-road credentials into entirely new territory and, after driving it, everything starts to make sense. Recently, over a few hours across a vast stretch of wet and rugged terrain in the Scottish countryside, Hypebeast put the Defender OCTA through its paces and it handled everything we threw at it with grace and with ease. The landscape, undulating beneath us throughout large parts of our test drive, should have turned us into temporary bobbleheads, bouncing around inside the car’s five doors. But it didn’t. The OCTA, which features an incredibly responsive 6D Dynamics air suspension system, constantly adjusted to ensure a relatively smooth and bump-free ride on an often rough and uneven course.
Photo: Felix Young/Hypebeast
Photo: Felix Young/Hypebeast
Photo: Felix Young/Hypebeast
Photo: Felix Young/Hypebeast
Photo: Felix Young/Hypebeast
Photo: Felix Young/Hypebeast
The wintery Scottish landscape also provided ample opportunities to test the the car’s different drive programs – and switching between these was seamless. From using the “Mud Ruts” program to climb a steep, slippery hill, before switching to “Wade” to navigate a body of water that covered most of car’s 33-inch tires, the OCTA was able to adjust everything from wheel height to suspension with the tap of a button. This helped to deliver an incredibly smooth drive throughout, an experience likely aided by the peace of mind provided by the OCTA’s efficiency. Compared to any other Land Rover to date, the OCTA features much better axle articulation and a greater tolerance for off-road driving, and it matches this agility with raw power and speed.
So, what else do you get for its six-figure sticker price? The OCTA is the most powerful Defender in the car’s 75 year history, with Land Rover sourcing its 4.4 litre V8 from BMW – but the OCTA isn’t Land Rover’s only car with this engine. Among the many features that sets it apart is the appropriately named “OCTA Mode”, which – activated with a single long press of the logo button on the steering wheel – acts like a Super Mario power-up mushroom for the car. It’s almost as though the OCTA was designed to be the last car you’d ever need, you know, if you needed one to survive an apocalypse.
It’s not clear whether JLR intended to create the fastest off-road vehicle, or the most off-road capable fast car. What is clear, though, is that the Defender OCTA is both of these things and more: a perfect marriage of speed and manoeuvrability that combines the performance and control needed to be a true, working utility vehicle with all the features and amenities you’d want expect in pure automotive luxury.
The Land Rover Defender OCTA is available now with prices starting at £145,300 GBP / $152,000 USD.
