Land Rover Defender Octa 2025 review – so much more than a ‘Defender SV’

Land Rover and its Special Vehicle Operations division could have made the Defender Octa a straight down the line, blinged-up super SUV with more power and bigger arches to rival the Mercedes-AMG G63, and the Nitra facility in Slovakia would have been lit day and night, building them to meet demand. Perhaps appropriately, though, it didn’t take the easy route, with the Defender Octa proving more akin to the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato and Porsche 911 Dakar, in terms of how richly detailed an engineering exercise it is and how an off road-ready vehicle can appeal to evo sensibilities. It’s turned Tarquin and Tabitha’s school run bus into an SAS-spec super truck, as we’ve discovered, first in France, with Editor-in-Chief Stuart Gallagher at the wheel and now on- and off-road in the Scottish borders. 

Normally the argument against super SUVs is that they’re unnecessary. On the contrary, the Defender OCTA could be all the car someone could ever need. As confusing a concept as it might be, this £145,000, 626bhp off-roader impresses in its very unique way as much as a blue-blood sports car does.

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There are, of course, many questions surrounding the Land Rover Defender Octa. You will undoubtedly have potentially just one of your own: why? Why build a 626bhp high performance version of a slab-sided, snub-nosed SUV aimed at the nuclear families of the UK’s upper-middle class. Conventional wisdom suggests that if you’re going to build a performance car you wouldn’t start with a Defender. Unless, of course, your team has previous where mad performance projects are concerned – see Jaguar Project 7 and Project 8 – and are stuck for something to do, with Range Rover Sport SV deliveries well underway, and have the father of the Ford Raptor, Jamal Hameedi, at the helm.

Land Rover’s entry into the Dakar, with the Octa set to be the racer’s road-going allegory, should be enough of an indication, this is not your standard ‘super SUV’. Beneath the wider bodywork (+68mm) and increased ride height (+28mm) lies a BMW-sourced 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 engine and SVO’s astonishing 6D Dynamic chassis tech, both first seen on the Range Rover Sport SV. The engine is a known quantity – the barrel-chested M5 mill that’s been fettled for JLR’s use, with 626bhp delivered from 5855-7000rpm.

The 6D tech is, however, probably the defining piece of the Octa puzzle. The system includes hydraulically-linked continuously variable semi-active dampers. Unlike on the SV, the 20-inch ‘motorsport’ wheels aren’t formed from carbon-fibre, but the brakes behind them are still suitably impressive Brembos with the front discs measuring 400mm. The software to manage the existing and new hardware is equally bespoke to this £145,300 model.

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If such things are possible, the Octa makes a regular Defender look a touch meek. Its wider arches and elevated ride height give its appearance more attitude as well as altitude, its wheel design more Sahara functional than Kings Road statement. Whether on French rally trails or climbing up the side of a Scottish mountain, the Octa looks like its on special-ops exercises, or about to mount its assault on Skyfall. There’s a real purposeful look to it, with nothing that appears tacked on, quite unlike some aftermarket attempts to add visual menace to a Defender.

You need a little more energy to make the step up to the Octa's cockpit, once there the changes are more material than anything performance related. The team behind it, led by SV’s Head of Vehicle Engineering, Stuart Adlard, delivered a diplomatic response when asked if they’d prefer the body and soul seats to be a little more motorsport inspired than they are. The car we drove in Scotland featured garish forged carbon trim elements that will no doubt prove popular. The shift paddles with clear – and + tabs that glow red in Octa mode are new, as is the Octa button below the steering wheel.

Our initial meeting with the Octa happens in France, a couple of hours west of Toulouse at a facility used by the French military as well as WRC and Rally-Raid teams for testing. It’s made up of a series of courses from regular unmade roads, a number of hillside climbs you’d expect to see at any off-road facility and then there’s what you wouldn’t expect to see: a loop of high-speed, technical circuits that go from gravel special stage spec to chassis twisting Dakar-spec leaps and ditches. Neither are designed for gentle meandering, but before the leaps, the drifts and mud wading we’ve turned right and headed for the road.

Land Rover Defender Octa on the road

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On the road, there’s some tyre noise from the optional Goodyear Wrangler ‘advanced all-terrain’ tyre fitted to both the test cars we’ve driven. It’s the most extreme of three options, lumbering the Octas to which it’s fitted with a 100mph speed limit. You can have a ‘standard’ all-terrain tyre on the 20-inch wheel, which is limited to 130mph. There’s also a 22-inch wheel available either in black or with diamond-cut detailing, which wears a Michelin all-season, allowing a 155mph limited top speed.

The tread blocks of the pro off-road tyre aren’t shy in moving around as you put some load through the steering, but you can still drive for mile after mile and not be distracted by their characteristics. Or you can take advantage of the added flex in the rubber and the tighter chassis to carry some attitude through corners, leaning more on the car’s outer edges and letting it move around more than you’d feel comfortable with in a Defender 110. In the UK the Defender Octa on these monster tyres feels entirely liberating, soaking and shrugging the kind of potholes that would render any supercar, or most other super SUVs, embarrassingly immobile.

> Range Rover 2025 review – there’s no need to go electric

What sends a bone-shattering shudder through the frame of a Urus, X6M or Range Rover Sport SV, for that matter, begins and ends with a barely noticeable ‘badum’ in the Octa. It’s a feeling of being free to roam on the road that we’d almost forgotten, save for scant reminders on the scarcest perfectly prepared roads the UK has to offer. It also means you’re free and quick to explore the Octa’s dynamic talents. The flexing tread blocks take a moment to get used to but the suspension system is enormously intuitive, allowing just the right amount of pitch, heave and lean for an almost Alpine-like attitude. The Octa's abilities in mass management are witchcraft next to a standard Def.

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With each mile the Octa shrugs off the numbness and remoteness regular Defenders have, and while it’s not exactly a keen conversationalist in the sense of a traditional sports car it feels tighter, more responsive and keen to engage on-road than all but the very best performance SUVs. 

If the Octa’s monster tyres allow you to explore its capabilities more of the time on the road, the suspension system is accountable for the uplift in on-road performance itself. With the adoption of the LR’s 6D dynamics chassis set-up the Octa ditches its anti-roll bars, which when off-road provide an additional 119mm of axle articulation and on road allows for much flatter and calmer cornering, that’s not so tied-down it feels unnatural. At each corner is a semi-active damper that’s combined with air springs with the former hydraulically linked around the car. Each damper is also equipped with its own Load Distribution Unit (LDU) that controls the three individual valves they also have, with the valves controlling rebound and compression and the LDU managing the system’s hydraulic pressure accordingly.

Rob Patching, Technical Specialist at JLR SVO and a key figure in the iterative development and testing of the Octa, told us the system was benchmarked against that of the McLaren 720S. Many confuse 6D with being a copy of the McLaren system but will be reminded, the McLaren doesn’t feature pitch control.

Fitted with longer wishbones (hence the Octa's extended width) it takes a four-square stance on the road, reacting to steering inputs cleanly and with the movement through the front wheels separated from the feedback of the tread blocks shuffling about. It makes for a Defender you want to set-up for a corner: pick a turn-in point, pour it in, wait for the settle then tap into the V8 to top-up your corner exit speed. Naturally there’s a drive mode to up the on-road ante, with Dynamic Mode tightening the steering, boosting the throttle’s sharpness and increasing roll resistance by 67 per cent and maximising pitch control; the changes feel more authentic here than they do in the majority of cars when you cycle through their drive modes.

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Even with its claimed unladen weight of 2585kg the V8 has the guts – 553lb ft or 590 in launch mode – to give it the hurry up, the Octa’s 246bhp/ton a little shy of Audi’s latest RS3. While its mass means its off the line punch isn’t a match for the hyperhatch, once the Octa is up and running it gathers momentum with serious pace, yet remains controlled rather than reaching an uncomfortable edge, managing its mass and bulk and throwing up no surprises. Call on its 400mm and six-piston front Brembo discs and calipers and the physics are harder to mask, but it pulls up consistently with only the slightest squirm from its Wranglers.

On the road the Octa is unexpectedly impressive, it’s not simply a Defender with the wick turned up and its sights set on headline performance figures – although it will reach 60mph in 3.8sec when launch mode is engaged – there’s integrity to what has been done here. Adlard and his team, led by Matt Becker, have created a Defender with a totally unexpected level of on-road ability and agility. It might say Defender on its bluff nose, but how it takes on a road is unlike any other.

Three years and more than 13,000 additional individual tests went into the Octa's development to guarantee it worked as well on the road as it does off, or on a circuit if you’ve seen the clips across social media from the Nürburgring of its beautifully executed four-wheel drifts. 

Off-road in the Defender Octa

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At Chateau Lastours, an 800 hectare estate that, along with producing its own wine, is home to 80 kilometres of off-road test tracks, the Octa feels immediately at home. The SV team spent as many hours here as they have anywhere else, primarily fine tuning the air-springs, semi-active dampers and the ABS braking system. 

From the on-site hotel car park to the 300 metre climb to the wind turbines at the summit, the first section we drive has the appearance of many off-road tracks you might have experienced and feels no more challenging than a track that runs through a stately home. Until you clock the regular Defender support vehicle behind is dropping further and further back every few metres. 

We’re still in Grass, Gravel and Snow mode selected via the Terrain Response system, but such is the breadth of the 6D chassis our speed is nearly double that of our followers. It’s down to the composure and bandwidth of the dampers allowing the car to float over the surface as each corner absorbs each impact it faces with engineered excellence. While the Octa’s cabin remains as calm and comfortable as it was on the road, the occupants behind are on the brink of being moved uncomfortably around the cabin.

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A rock crawl climb is dismissed with ease as we cut across to our final destination, the revised bumper design providing the required approach and departure angles, the trademark differentials and head spinning software managing the torque distribution at each wheel. 

But a Defender chewing through rocks is nothing new, a Defender taking on a WRC stage and not making a fool of itself is. Where a single press of the Octa button on the base of the steering wheel activates Dynamic mode for the road, hold it down longer and you’re into Octa off-road mode – the car’s high performance off-road setting. 

Not only does it allow you to use the off-road launch control function, it also halves roll resistance pressure in the dampers, removes pitch control and increases wheel travel. It also shifts more power and torque to the rear axle, maximises the damping force depending on the surface and with the stability controls slackened it also adapts the car’s ABS software to allow more lock up to allow a build up of loose surface material to form in front of the tyres to aid retardation. 

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On the gravel stage the Octa takes some recalibration of your mental processors. You’re not initially inclined to set a Defender up early in the corner, tuck its nose in and drive through the middle of the apex with more throttle than you initially think is unwise as you start to unwind the lock and apply more in the opposite direction before the exit is in sight. But that’s exactly what you need to do to extract the Octa's frankly remarkable ability. Across a loose surface it moves around with an eerie precision, every one of your inputs faithfully performed beneath you as this five metre long SUV pivots, slides and glides like a late Nineties era Evo across a snow covered supermarket carpark. 

With every corner, high speed braking area and rut and crest you learn something new about the car and yourself. It will pull off the most ridiculous drifts through a 180-degree hairpin, your right foot managing each slug of turbocharged torque, your hands moving around the wheel winding and unwinding lock as those meaty Goodyears bite through the surface to find traction with the tenacity to match a Cup 2 R gluing itself to the tarmac through Eau Rouge. 

At the end of the longer straights the Octa delivers another of its party pieces: its brakes. Hit the left pedal as hard as you can and while your brain tells you this is going to result in a hyper active brake pedal and very little retardation, the exact opposite happens. The ABS kicks in later as the front wheels lock for longer to build that wall of debris to help slow you, and boy does it stop with an unexpected force. 

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It’s hard to know if the braking performance is more impressive than how it flies and lands across the Rally Raid course jumps. Or how it allows you to constantly adjust your line as you hunt out the grip across loose surfaces without biting you for doing so. It’s the way it draws you into the action, engages you and just wants to have fun is the experience that never leaves you even months after driving it. No, it’s not a car we really need especially so in Europe – although those customers in North America and the Middle East who have the territory and space to allow them to use and enjoy an Octa as intended, do – but you could say the same about a 911 GT3 RS. 

The Octa’s form in France proved to be no fluke, as we turn a right-hand drive Octa’s nose towards a Scottish farming property, our JLR minders having organised the intrusion many weeks prior. It handles each gradually more extreme approach to traversing the Scottish countryside with considerable aplomb. From wading through rivers as deep as 1000mm, to 70mph, trophy truck-style scrabbles through a hillside patch of forestry, the Octa continually demonstrates that it’s an off-roader and a performance car unlike anything that’s come before it. This is a luxury super SUV that could dispatch a middling Pennine as a house spider would a shagpile rug; a performance car with a breadth of yobbery that includes being able to jump over a roundabout, as well as drift around it.

The Defender Octa is a remarkable achievement. The depth and breadth of the engineering and the character, substance and extraordinary capability that’s inherently manifested is beyond what any could have imagined for it. It is so much more than the G63 from the Black Country ‘Defender SVR’ we all had in our mind’s eye, back when Land Rover’s reborn icon broke cover in 2019. The Range Rover Sport SV suggested SVO were serious about substance as well as style (quite unlike the original Range Rover Sport SVR). The Defender Octa proves it beyond any doubt.

Price and rivals

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Because SVO has elevated the Defender Octa above the usual crop of ‘super SUVs’, it's mostly beyond conventional comparison, occupying a rarified pool of machinery. Land Rover charges £145,300 for the Defender Octa with that price climbing £160,800 for an Edition One (carbon fibre exterior trim and the 20-inch off-road wheels and tyres, upgraded interior fabrics and body coloured bonnet). While an AMG G63 at £184,595 might look a suitable rival, if you asked it to do what an Octa can achieve you’ll learn a very expensive lesson in why you shouldn’t over-estimate a car’s ability based on how hefty the door feels.

You could buy a couple of £68,970 Ariel Nomad 2s for the price of one Octa, and that’s really the only option to have more fun on four wheels off-road as you’ll get.

Land Rover Defender Octa specs