{"id":3578,"date":"2025-03-28T20:36:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T12:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/168.107.17.222\/?p=3578"},"modified":"2026-06-27T00:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:12:10","slug":"hands-on-with-the-2025-land-rover-defender-octa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/2025\/03\/28\/hands-on-with-the-2025-land-rover-defender-octa\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands-On with the 2025 Land Rover Defender OCTA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The latest Defender in Land Rover\u2019s four-wheeled infantry is here \u2013 and it is quite something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since it was announced last summer, there\u2019s been an endless buzz around the Land Rover Defender OCTA. And understandably so: it\u2019s 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\u2019t simply down to its impressive on-paper specs \u2013 nor even because of the \u00a3160,800 GBP ($167,900 USD) price tag you\u2019ll find on an \u201cEdition One\u201d model. Rather, five years on from the Defender\u2019s 2020 relaunch, the Defender OCTA seems to mark an entirely new chapter in Land Rover\u2019s decades long lore \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent weeks, those lucky enough to call themselves new owners of Land Rover\u2019s latest car have began taking delivery of their vehicles \u2013 an exclusive bunch that includes Dubai\u2019s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, whose new OCTA bears his \u201cDubai 1\u201d 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\u2019s contribution to this is set to be fractional \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, it\u2019s understandable when you think about it: the 2025 Land Rover Defender OCTA isn\u2019t your average SUV. It\u2019s probably fair to say that it isn\u2019t your average Land Rover Defender. In development for over three years, the OCTA was \u201csubjected to the most extreme testing and development programme in Defender history,\u201d according to Land Rover, with the company\u2019s engineers putting it through \u201c13,960 additional tests\u201d on top of the existing \u201cstandard Defender testing regime\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the OCTA was designed to take Land Rover\u2019s 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\u2019s five doors. But it didn\u2019t. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wintery Scottish landscape also provided ample opportunities to test the the car\u2019s different drive programs \u2013 and switching between these was seamless. From using the \u201cMud Ruts\u201d program to climb a steep, slippery hill, before switching to \u201cWade\u201d to navigate a body of water that covered most of car\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what else do you get for its six-figure sticker price? The OCTA is the most powerful Defender in the car\u2019s 75 year history, with Land Rover sourcing its 4.4 litre V8 from BMW \u2013 but the OCTA isn\u2019t Land Rover\u2019s only car with this engine. Among the many features that sets it apart is the appropriately named \u201cOCTA Mode\u201d, which \u2013 activated with a single long press of the logo button on the steering wheel \u2013 acts like a Super Mario power-up mushroom for the car. It\u2019s almost as though the OCTA was designed to be the last car you\u2019d ever need, you know, if you needed one to survive an apocalypse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019d want expect in pure automotive luxury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Land Rover Defender OCTA is available now with prices starting at \u00a3145,300 GBP \/ $152,000 USD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The latest Defender in Land Rover\u2019s four-wheeled infant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[223],"tags":[38,35],"class_list":["post-3578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-car","tag-defender","tag-land-rover"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3590,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions\/3590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayoyo.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}