The new Land Rover Defender OCTA will quickly cement itself as a high point in the icon's history. It offers more power and more capability without ruining its luxury appeal. Where will it go next? Your guess is as good as ours
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00:00I'm Matt Jasinski with Motor Trend, here in South Africa with the 2025 Defender.
00:12But this isn't just any Defender.
00:14This is the Defender Octa, the most capable and most powerful Defender that Land Rovers
00:18ever come out with.
00:24This is the prime location because both the brand and this vehicle have a rich history
00:28in proving its off-road excellence, but one of the things we love about the Defender is
00:32its ability to be a mild-mannered, engaging vehicle to drive on the road.
00:36Now you might be looking at this one, you see all this off-road gear, all this recovery
00:40equipment, the spare tires, the winch, the wider fenders, the aggressive tires.
00:44So is it still the same Defender we know and love?
00:47Maybe it's better.
00:48One of the things we see with off-road vehicles is there's usually a compromise.
00:51You're giving something up, whether it's ride comfort or load capacity, but the Octa here
00:56might be the one vehicle out there that is no compromise.
00:59It actually has a higher payload capacity than the standard Defender, in addition to
01:04its off-road capability.
01:05What we've yet to test is, how does it do on the road?
01:08Does all this off-road equipment change its manners?
01:11It has a completely different suspension.
01:12It has different tires.
01:14It might look the same, and we love that about it.
01:16It's very unassuming.
01:17It doesn't have graphics and badges all over it.
01:19In fact, the badging's very subtle.
01:21But how does it do on the road?
01:23Well, we're going to take you through the country, and we're going to find out.
01:29One thing we've always loved about the Defender is its exceptional ride and handling on the
01:33road.
01:34Its mix of on-road and off-road capability is really unique in its segment.
01:37With most off-roaders, there's usually some kind of compromise, and with the hardcore
01:41off-roaders, we have even more compromise.
01:43When we look at trucks like the Ford Raptor or the Ram TRX, those are trucks with lowered
01:49load capacities.
01:50They have worse ride and handling, although they do have exceptional off-road capability.
01:55But it makes them less enjoyable to drive every day.
01:58But with the Octa here, we really don't have any compromise.
02:01And as hard as that is to believe, it's true.
02:04Its on-road manners are as good as the Defender's always been.
02:07In fact, driving it really doesn't feel that different than any other standard Defender.
02:11Sure, you've got the torque of the most powerful V8 that Land Rover's ever put in a Defender,
02:17and it does have a wider track, and it has a lot of chassis improvements.
02:20But those things only add to the driving experience of the Defender.
02:24Despite its enhanced off-road capability, it has a higher load capacity.
02:28So because it's designed to go off-road, take bigger excursions, and take you further and
02:32farther, you don't lose the ability to take more gear with you.
02:37Diving deeper into what's underneath the Defender Octa, it's a completely different beast again.
02:41Beefier components are mounted with a different geometry.
02:44It's still an air-sprung, independent, multi-link setup at each corner, but air springs are
02:49hydraulically linked in place of an anti-roll bar.
02:52Wheel articulation has been one of the few weak points of the Defender when it comes
02:56to its off-road capability, but the new system can decouple each wheel independently in real-time.
03:03Having to rock crawl in and out of our stay at Bushman's Cliff Wilderness Reserve, we
03:07love the active nature of the system, and we avoided having to fiddle around with anti-roll
03:11bar distanecs that can be notoriously slow and hard to engage or disengage depending
03:17on the wheel position and vehicle position.
03:19Triple-valve, continuously variable, semi-active dampers round out the new 6D Dynamic Suspension
03:25System with separate comfort, jounce, and rebound valves, working to keep our Defender
03:29steady through many of the washboarded gravel roads we encountered.
03:34One of the ways Defender made sure that the Octa had the off-road capability and on-road
03:38handling and ride that they were hoping for was by putting it through a full off-road
03:42durability and on-road performance durability, part of which included laps around the Nurburgring.
03:48To the best of Defender's knowledge, this is the first vehicle that's done that.
03:52Typically, with a targeted vehicle like this, you would see an emphasis on the off-road
03:56durability.
03:57Sure, there's standard tests you do for on-road and regulations, but you don't usually go
04:01through the effort of designing something for extreme off-road capability and then going
04:05and putting it around a racetrack.
04:07That's one of the factors that truly makes the Defender unique.
04:10We're so impressed with how the Octa has delivered and what Defender claims it should that it's
04:15crazy to think it almost didn't even exist.
04:17Internally, there seemed to be more push for an SVO-type vehicle, more on-road, performance-focused,
04:23but that's not really the Defender.
04:25The Defender design team stayed true to the heart.
04:27It's that off-road capability.
04:30As time has proliferated the adoption of electronic steering racks, so many vehicles just seem
04:35to get more and more numb.
04:36There's very little steering feel and very little connection to the road.
04:40The Defender hasn't suffered that exactly, but it still just feels like a modern vehicle.
04:45Whether it's the sticky off-road tires or the wider track, the Defender has a great
04:50feel on the road.
04:51The steering ratio has been made quite a bit quicker, so it does feel more responsive and
04:56it does feel more sporty.
04:58Combined with the big wheel, I've always loved this big steering wheel.
05:01Cruising through the sand dunes, that quicker ratio was really, really noticeable.
05:05The wheel was easy to turn around, and you could really feel when you were losing traction
05:10in the sand.
05:11And when you're driving in things like sand, that's really what's important.
05:14But despite all the assist, you really had a great feel for it.
05:21Now, when we really lay into the throttle, we can hear a little bit of the engine.
05:26In fact, we can hear it to a satisfactory extent.
05:28It's got a sound that competes with the best of V8s.
05:31Personally, I've always loved that classic NASCAR V8 sound, and honestly, the Defender
05:36is right up there with them.
05:38Could be a little bit louder, though.
05:40When you are cruising, it is pretty quiet, it is pretty subdued.
05:44Maybe there's people out there that get tired of hearing a V8, but we've got to imagine
05:47that if you're buying this vehicle, you want to hear the V8.
05:51With an active exhaust, you can probably get a little bit more noise out of it, and we
05:55know that Defender is routing some of the exhaust artificially into the cabin.
06:00So there's room to tweak it there a little bit.
06:04Defender tells us that they're abiding by all, mostly the European sound standards for
06:09the exhaust, but we would like to see a little bit more noise inside the cabin, and that
06:15wouldn't change anything that's happening outside the cabin or change any of its pass-by
06:19qualifications.
06:20Okay, so like we talked about, there are two exterior colors for the Defender Octa.
06:26So this example in front of us here is the Faro Green with matte protective film and
06:30Narvik Black Contrast roof and tailgate.
06:33The other option is a Petra Copper with a matte protective film and the same Narvik
06:38Black Contrast roof and tailgate.
06:40And as you can see, this one's fairly dirty, but it still looks great, and that's one of
06:44the things about this vehicle.
06:46I love the design of this.
06:48It looks really cool.
06:49It looks great whether it's clean or dirty, right?
06:51So you can clean it up.
06:52It looks great in your driveway, but it's also going to look killer after you've taken
06:56it off-road and gotten it a little bit dirty.
06:58So this is the Khaki and Ebony colorway with perforated UltraFabrics and the Kavadra Performance
07:03Seats, which is going to give you some really cool immersive audio options that's new for
07:08the Defender.
07:09And just like the exterior, you'd never look at this interior aside from the floor mats
07:13and some of the plastic and guess that this thing has just gone on a cross-country trek.
07:17We've made no effort to clean this, and we don't really intend to because it looks pretty
07:21cool, and this is what a Defender should be doing.
07:24Here's a closer look at the back of the seats with the chopped carbon.
07:27Super cool look.
07:28Carbon fiber can be, I don't know, it can be a little off-putting, it can be a little
07:32extreme, but this is pretty subtle here.
07:35We like this.
07:36This is a better implementation of it.
07:38Sometimes the chopped carbon can look really recycled in other implementations, but this
07:43one's really aesthetic, and it looks really, really cool, and we think it's a great, great
07:46option.
07:47Coming back to the exterior, here's the 20-inch wheels available for the Defender Octa.
07:53They have got a great look.
07:55Personally, some of the wheels available for the Defender I love, some of them are not
08:00my favorite, but these are a killer look, and you've got three different tire options.
08:04You've got a brand new off-road tire.
08:07That's these Goodyear Wranglers right here.
08:10These are the most aggressive tires, and frankly, the interior cabin noise is ultra quiet.
08:15It's impressive what they've been able to do to keep road noise out of the cabin, so
08:18even with these aggressive off-road tires, they're a joy to drive, and they sound great,
08:23and in our experience with other vehicles, these Duratrax tend to hold up.
08:27On our figure-eight course, we tend to burn up tires when we do performance handling testing,
08:31and on other vehicles, these are pretty durable, so if you're looking for an Octa, if you plan
08:37on off-roading it, we don't really see a reason not to get these tires as an option.
08:42Like I said, up in the front, it's very unassuming.
08:45We've got the Edition 1 Octa badge right here, and that's really it.
08:50It's, yeah, obviously it's a Defender.
08:52We've got the Land Rover badge.
08:54We really like this cool orange highlighted Defender here by the fender vent, and the
08:59only other real sign is the Octa badge here, which you'll see does not actually have eight
09:06sides, but for aesthetic reasons, the designers thought this made more sense than
09:12an actual eight-sided badge, but the other clue here is the Octa here is a bit wider,
09:20and if you pan out here, you can see the stance of this thing is really aggressive.
09:25It's really, really cool.
09:26You'll also notice here that the fender vents have the same chopped carbon as the interior,
09:32and it is just a cool look.
09:33Mixed with the matte coloring, it just looks killer.
09:37In the back here, we've got some fairly standard accessories.
09:39We've got our rubber cargo mat.
09:41We've got our cargo cover here that really came in handy thrashing this thing through
09:47the dunes and some extreme angles off-road that kept everything nice and tidy.
09:52We've got our parcel cover here.
09:55It is a little bit of a shelf.
09:57You can't put a lot on top of it.
09:59It'll mostly keep your gear covered, but if you had lighter objects, blankets or jackets
10:03or something like that, you could probably load them up top here, but we've also got
10:07this nice cargo net here to keep anything from sliding forward.
10:10If you're using this net or not, you can take this off, stack things up, and this gives
10:14you a little bit of protection, but it doesn't block your view.
10:18These are standard accessories, but this is the first time we've really got to put them
10:22through the test here, and they definitely came in handy.
10:25There's so much to love about the Defender.
10:28Here is this incredible 4.4 liter V8.
10:33It is the most powerful V8 that Land Rover has put in a Defender.
10:37It's got 626 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque.
10:42It is a mild hybrid with an electric motor in there, and what that did is it's going
10:46to help smooth out the shifts.
10:47It helps avoid any turbo lag, and when we were crawling on the rocks, it helped avoid
10:53any of that torque converter slip, so the throttle response was absolutely fantastic
10:57in this vehicle here.
10:59Very little rollback effort.
11:01This thing just goes.
11:02Point it where you want it and hit the gas.
11:05Twin turbo.
11:06You can see each intake on each side, and incredibly, there's not a lot in here.
11:12There's not a lot of dirt, not a lot of dust.
11:14These vehicles were perfectly clean when we got them, and frankly, they're still not all
11:19that dirty, so the engine is getting plenty of clean air.
11:24This is probably one of the harder parts to clean in a vehicle, and a lot of people don't
11:27think about it, but it's not really something you're going to have to think about a lot
11:30here.
11:31Over time, it'll accumulate, but that'll happen with any vehicle.
11:36Then here on the fenders, we've got some more of that chopped carbon, and it just is a great
11:40accent to the contours of this hood, and it just makes a really cool-looking vehicle.
11:45Absolutely love this thing.
11:46It's been a complete joy to have here.
11:50Much like the exterior, the interior here in the Defender Octa is relatively unassuming.
11:55As far as the controls and the layout, you're not going to see a whole lot that's different,
11:58except a key difference here is if you take a look at the bottom of the steering wheel
12:02here, we've got this awesome Octa Mode button.
12:05Now, there's three different modes you can cycle through.
12:08If you press it once, you'll get an enhanced dynamic mode, so even if you're familiar with
12:12the 5-liter V8 in the Defender, you're going to get a lot more out of this new suspension
12:18and engine powertrain setup with the 4.4-liter V8 with the enhanced dynamic mode.
12:23If you press it again, you'll go into auto-terrain response mode, but with a long press and hold,
12:28you'll get the full Octa Mode, which is the wildest, most unbridled mode you've ever had
12:33in a Defender, and what we're going to get from that is less interference from the DSC
12:41and we'll also get a lot more power towards the rear, so we'll get a much more rear-wheel
12:46drive feeling, and that'll also give you the option of enabling the Octa Launch Mode, which
12:51is the first time that Defender's put a dedicated launch mode in the Defender.
12:57Another cool addition that we like are these edge-lit paddle shifters.
13:01They're black plastic, and on the top here, you can see they're clear with the plus and
13:04minus shift.
13:06It doesn't necessarily make them more functional.
13:08You can see through.
13:09They don't block the stock controls very much, but they've got a cool look, and it's another
13:13thing, another subtle thing that makes the Octa special.
13:20After a few days traversing South Africa here in the Defender Octa, we can truly say that
13:25this is a no-compromise off-road vehicle.
13:28I've never been in a vehicle that handles so well off-road and on-road.
13:32A lot of the off-road trucks out there, the very extreme ones, they do okay on the road,
13:36but you still give something up, and Defender has really knocked it out of the park with
13:40this one.
13:41Although it looks very similar, aside from the wider fenders and subtleties of the standard
13:46Defender, it's a completely different truck, and yet, it has the same personality of the
13:51standard Defender.
13:52It has everything we love, and we had no issues with it off-road.
13:56It did everything we wanted it to do, and it was a complete joy to drive on the road,
14:01even with these really extreme off-road tires.
14:04If you're a Defender fan, this is the ultimate.
14:07This is the one that you should strive for.
14:09We encourage anybody who's interested in it to check this one out.
14:13For more on the Defender Octa, for more in-depth specs, check out Motortrend.com.