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

If there’s another road car on sale with a broader range of abilities, we’ve yet to drive it. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.