Ultimate £160k Land Rover Defender Octa will sprint from 0-60mph in 3.8 seconds

The new Land Rover Defender Octa has been revealed as the ultimate incarnation of the popular off-roader, boasting 626bhp and a price tag of up to £160,000.

Land Rover claims that the Octa has been extensively reworked compared with the regular Defender 110, leaving “no compromises”, and says that the heavily revised chassis, complete with the brand’s new 6D Dynamics suspension, gives the Land Rover Defender Octa new modes for switching between the extremes of high performance on and off road.  

“Usually when you make a focused vehicle even more focused, it comes with a whole slate of compromises in other areas,” Jamal Hameedi, Director of Special Vehicle Operations for Jaguar Land Rover told Auto Express. “So the mindset with this car is that we would not accept compromises in any areas in order to maximise one area. So we have to grow the whole circle of capability.”

The 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8’s 626bhp makes the Octa the most powerful Land Rover Defender ever, with up to 750Nm of torque and a 0-60mph acceleration time of just 3.8 seconds. That compares with the current V8 Defender 130’s 493bhp and 5.4-second acceleration time. First cars will be delivered late this year, with the UK getting an allocation of 1,070 units.

Approach, breakaway and departure angles are all improved over the regular Defender 110’s, thanks to redesigned bumpers, while wading depth is up by 100mm, to a metre of water. The Octa sits 28mm higher and is 68mm wider than the regular 110, courtesy of chunkier tyres and wider arches, and other engineering changes include uprated brakes and what Land Rover says is the fastest steering ratio of any Defender to date, designed to make it feel more precise and responsive. 

An exhaustive testing programme included the Octa becoming the first vehicle to traverse every single track at Land Rover’s famous Eastnor Castle facility in Herefordshire.

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The Octa is being launched in two trim levels. The £160,800 Edition 1 is a limited model only offered in the first year on sale, while the regular version is priced at £145,300. For the extra money you get a colour option not available on the regular version, as well as upgraded interior, 20-inch alloy wheels and the option of specially developed Advanced All-Terrain Tyres.  

“We literally had to invent a new tyre; nobody's done that before, and I think it's because people have always accepted compromise,” explained Hameedi. “It's either an on-road vehicle, or it's an off-road vehicle. And I think we're the first people who said it's going to be both and it's going to excel at both, so what does it take to get there? That's really the thinking of the whole car; we want it to be as fun on the Stelvio Pass as it would be on a Dakar Rally stage.”

Land Rover has introduced new driving modes for its 6D suspension system, with a tuned Dynamic mode for on-road driving joined by the brand’s first off-road performance setting. Octa mode, as it’s called, also features an off-road launch mode for full-bore acceleration on loose surfaces. The full suite of Terrain Response off-road systems is still present, as is the case with the regular Defender. 

The Octa is named after the shape octahedron, with Land Rover drawing parallels with a diamond as a “combination of extreme toughness and luxury”. The Octa branding is subtle enough that only the keen eye will even spot this seven-figure range-topper, with discrete diamond badging instead of the more obvious SV branding of the high-performance Range Rover Sport, for example. 

“I think for us it reinforces Defender as a brand, the capabilities of Defender as a brand and how extreme the bandwidth of its capability is,” Jaguar Land Rover Managing Director Patrick McGillycuddy told Auto Express. “From the Nurburgring to the Atlas Mountains to the Dubai Desert through a metre of water, I don't think there was anything more capable on the market and that's something we're really proud of and excited about.” 

SVO director Hameedi said that while the Octa is a unique model at the top of the Defender line-up, there are still some learnings that could be carried over to more regular Defenders. “I think that there's a lot of tuning in the chassis where we can learn lessons to make core Defenders more capable, and there are things such as the seats having no seam lines, which is a new technology that we're piloting on this car,” he concluded. 

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