The Defender Octa is the most extreme, powerful and capable variant of the 4×4 that Land Rover has yet produced, complete with a spec sheet that reflects its top-end £158,000 price.
Limited to 1070 examples, the new flagship Defender is available in the 110 body shape only and is a way of showcasing the peak capabilities of the brand.
“This is a Defender on steroids – the pinnacle,” said Defender and Discovery brand boss Mark Cameron. “Nothing else on sale feels like this.”
The first model from the new Octa sub-brand for special-edition Defenders is powered by the same 4.4-litre BMW-derived V8 as the Range Rover, but it has been ramped up to 626bhp and 590lb ft to rival the Mercedes-AMG G63.
That’s enough muscle to push the 2510kg SUV from 0-60mph in a supercar-baiting 3.8sec and all the way to a top speed of 155mph.
This puts it close to the Range Rover Sport SV for outright pace and dwarfs the standard Defender V8, which uses JLR’s older supercharged unit, by 108bhp.
But despite its prodigious on-road performance, the focus for the Octa is more on providing greater levels of off-road ability than any Land Rover to date.
To prove its durability and duality, engineers put the Octa through 13,960 tests and clocked up 683,508 miles in challenging and wildly varying conditions all around the world.
These included sand dunes in Dubai, snow and ice circuits in Sweden, on track at the Nürburgring and at the unforgiving Dakar Rally proving ground in the south of France.
JLR said it had to create a bespoke and highly varied test programme for the Octa given its wide-reaching breadth of capability, trialling new heights of “capability and robustness that have never been explored before”.
The intention was “to demonstrate it could push the boundaries of what a Defender can do”, without compromising on-road drivability or comfort, Jamal Hameedi, boss of JLR’s SVO division for special vehicles, told Autocar.