2025 Land Rover Defender OCTA Prototype First Ride: Raptor Who?
The regular MotorTrend SUVOTY-winning Land Rover Defender apparently wasn’t enough.
If anyone has accused the Land Rover Defender of not being enough, we’re not aware of it. Sure, aftermarket support exists, but it would be nigh impossible to argue the Defender doesn’t go hard enough right out of the box. Unless, of course, you’re JLR’s Special Vehicles Operations, in which case you look at the Defender and go: what if we really tried to do it all somehow better? If so, you’d end up with the 2025 Land Rover Defender OCTA.
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The What Now?
Yes, it’s called OCTA, and yes, it’s an acronym you should pronounce like a word. It’s short for octahedron, the most common shape of a cut diamond like the kind on an engagement ring. Yes, the badge features a four-pointed diamond instead of an eight-pointed one as the OCTA abbreviation would suggest, but as SVO boss Jamal Hameedi, explains, it’s “reductive” and visually easier to read and therefore more recognizable.
That’s important, because you don’t want to dwell what it’s called but rather what it does. Hameedi will never say it, but after just a brief ride in an OCTA prototype, one comes to the inescapable conclusion that he wanted to outdo himself. If the name rings familiar, it’s because he was the chief engineer of Ford Performance and, before that, of Ford’s Special Vehicles Team (SVT) and responsible for products like, oh, nearly every Ford Raptor in existence.
So What Is It, Exactly?
To be mildly vulgar, the OCTA is the most badass Defender Land Rover can build within the confines of the law. As Hameedi explains, it’s not something customers were specifically asking for but rather a sort of internal challenge to see how far the SVO team could take the Defender while keeping it road legal. Ideally, customers will be as interested or more so than the people who built it, and after a brief ride, we’d bet on it.
We’d also suggest interested parties take a test drive. From the outside, the OCTA looks like a Defender with big tires and fender flares, but the subtlety belies the engineering at work. Those visual cues are indicative at what’s at play, though. Fully kitted out, the OCTA wears 20-inch wheels (as small as the engineers could go and still fit the 15.7-inch brakes and Brembo calipers) in either a custom-made Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac RT all-terrain tire that shares nothing but their name with other Goodyear tires, a BF Goodrich Trail Terrain option that trades a bit of off-road grip for roadholding, or a 22-inch wheel wrapped in Michelin street tires that raise the top speed from 130 mph (a likely record for all-terrains) to 155 mph. Hameedi says the OCTA went through roughly 1 million kilometers of testing on- and off-road without a single flat tire. “We set out to do everything a G63 could do on-road but not compromise the off-road capability,” Hameedi told MotorTrend, “but expand it.”
Fitting those 33-inch tires required raising the ride height by 1.1 inch. The SVO team could’ve gone bigger, but Hameedi says 35-inch tires would’ve ruined the steering response. This team wanted the OCTA to perform as well on the Nürburgring as it does on a two-track, after all. Getting that lift, plus the desired geometry, required new upper control arms, tension links, lateral links, and knuckles. Hameedi brags it’s the only vehicle he’s aware of that increased its ride height while maintaining its original, lower roll center. The lift increase the maximum approach and departure angles to 42 and 43 degrees, respectively. Breakover is up to 29 degrees.
Derived from the same parts tuned for performance in the Range Rover SV, the OCTA adds 1.4 inch of front and 0.4 inch of rear wheel travel over a standard Defender 110. The “6-D” hydraulic suspension system featuring tri-valve shocks that are probably the most important upgrade of all. The first two valves are the kind you’ve heard of before, controlling compression and rebound damping at each corner. The third valve is what separates it from the likes of the Rivian R1S. That last valve disconnects its damper from the other three as needed. It’s the hydraulic equivalent of disconnecting the anti-roll bars.
Mercedes G-Class and ... Citroen DS as Benchmarks?
Portal axles, like those on the G63 4x4 Squared, were considered but rejected due to the trade-offs in weight and ride quality. For the driver, the new suspension means better ride quality when the OCTA is driving straight down the road as each wheel can react to bumps in the road without affecting the wheel on the opposite side of the vehicle. In fact, the team actually found a vintage Citroen DS to drive as a reference point for what a hydraulic suspension is capable in terms of ride quality.
More importantly, it means when off-roading each wheel can droop farther than ever before. The biggest limitation of a fully independent suspension like that on the Defender is the wheels can’t move as far up and down as with a live axle. The “6-D” suspension eliminates the steel anti-roll bars that necessarily impede wheel travel and let the OCTA’s suspension use every bit of the standard Defender 110’s 5.3-inches of travel. No, total suspension travel isn’t increased, but the amount the vehicle can actually use is.
This means the OCTA is better at keeping its wheels on the ground in extreme situations. Whereas a standard Defender 110 might get crossed-up with a wheel hanging in the air over deeply uneven terrain, the OCTA is more likely to keep all-four wheels on the ground even when rock crawling, giving it better grip and stability. Decoupling the wheels from one another on the most difficult terrain also has the effect of greatly reducing head toss in the cabin, as riding in an OCTA and a standard 110 back-to-back amply demonstrated.
It's More Than That
The OCTA isn’t just fancy dampers. There’s also a monster V-8 to consider. After all, the only thing more fun that going off-road is going off-road faster. To do so, Land Rover has bought BMW’s delightful 4.4-liter twin-turbo mild-hybrid V-8, stuffed it under the Defender’s diamond-plated hood, and tuned it to 626 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque (or as much as 590 lb-ft when using launch control). The SVO teams says that’s good for a 0-60 mph time of 3.8 seconds and, fitted with dual snorkels, a wading depth of 39.3 inches (nearly four more than a Defender 110). A larger front grille opening feeds the more-powerful engine with cooling air while quad exhaust pipes get rid of the leftovers. Hameedi says the torque curve is even flatter than the familiar JLR supercharged 5.0-liter V-8.
To take advantage of the engine and the suspension, there are two new drive modes. On-road, there’s an updated Dynamic mode that should make the OCTA handle like a really, really tall sports car. Off-road, OCTA mode (activated by the new diamond button below the horn that turns the paddle shifters red), sets the big SUV up like a rally car with rear-biased power, compliant dampers, off-road calibrated anti-lock braking, and loosened traction and stability controls. Also, off-road launch control, because yes.
The Resulting SVO-Tuned Defender
Rather than give it all up right out of the gate, SVO engineers decided us to work us up to the big show. Confined to the passenger’s seat, we immediately noticed the reduced head toss and lack of teeter-tottering as the OCTA easily scaled a rock pile. Greater standard ride height or not, the new graphite-zirconium coated aluminum skid plates under the nose and belly still got a mild workout with no adverse effect.
Transitioning from rocks to a high-speed trail meant squeezing through some narrow forest paths and revealed the OCTA’s one obvious compromise. At nearly 2.7 inches wider than a Defender 110 and sporting yellow clearance lights out of necessity rather than fashion, the OCTA will struggle with narrower trails. It is, according to Hameedi, as wide as they could get away with and still get the truck through European cities.
Coming to a clearing, our driver put the hammer down and blew our mind. Even on mud, the OCTA accelerates like a big, tall super car. If you can’t scare yourself in this truck, you’re too jaded for street-legal vehicles. Plus, it sounds like a BMW M5 while doing it. Best of all, the rear-biased power delivery allowed our maniacal chauffeur to drive the truck almost entirely with the throttle, constantly sideways in big, lurid, seemingly easily controlled power slides.
Anyone can put a big engine under the hood. The OCTA strikes its killing blow when you start to look at the trail just in front of the hood rather than the trees in the distance. Then, you start to worry about all the bumps and holes in the pockmarked track. That is, until you actually hit them. It’s an experience we can only fairly compare to riding in a Baja trophy truck. No, the OCTA doesn’t have nearly the suspension travel and can’t run through holes as deep or bumps as tall, but the kind of stuff you’re likely to encounter on your average forest road is handled with the same kind of casual indifference by the OCTA’s suspension. Hits you expect to feel in your spine are shrugged off with less violence than a freeway expansion joint. It’s a bit what we think a Rivian R1S would feel like if it were 2,000 pounds or so lighter.
The overall effect is one that convinces you an OCTA could be driven down most dirt roads exceeding freeway speeds with no consequences. It honestly feels as though the truck could plow over and through anything short of a crater without damage. Quite frankly, Ford Raptors wish they could go this hard with this little effect translated to the driver. No small part of it, according to Hameedi, is the independent suspension that doesn’t have to deal with a heavy solid axle like other rigs he’s worked on.
That invincibility might encourage you to go even farther than the SVO engineers in their claimed 13,960 additional tests beyond what a Defender is subjected to. It’s worth keeping in mind the OCTA doesn’t have hydraulic jounce dampers and isn’t specifically designed to do sweet jumps. That said, it landed beautifully after the small jumps our driver took it off, so it’s not shrinking violet at maximum suspension travel, either. Should you overdo it, the OCTA adds a center recovery point in the front bumper and a pair in the rear bumper. The actual metal beam behind the front bumper has also been widened to protect against more potential hits.
Land Rover Defender OCTA Coming Soon
“We call Defender a decathlete,” Hameedi said, “it does everything well. You can push the off-road capabilities out, but our mantra was: we cannot degrade anything else.” Our ride along included no time on pavement, but you can look up videos of OCTA prototypes on the Nürburgring to get a sense of what it’s capable of on the street-focused tire.You’re likely to see it drifting a corner, which is mildly annoying to the SVO team because they’d like you all to know they drifted every corner on the track on that particular lap but the photographers only caught the one.
We’re left with the impression the Defender OCTA will be on-sale before the year is out, though Land Rover hasn’t committed to a specific date yet. The fancier-looking Edition One with its special paint, wheels, and carbon-fiber trim inside and out will be a single model year deal with sales limited to 4,000 units. Those will retail for $169,275 while regular OCTAs, which aren't limited production, will cost $153,475. Yes, that’s expensive, but Land Rover has kept a watchful eye on ever-increasing G-Wagen prices and sees no reason it can’t follow the same path.
For now, the OCTA treatment is exclusive to the four-door Defender 110 thanks to its more stable long wheelbase, but Hameedi won’t rule out other iterations. Asked about a two-door Defender 90 OCTA, he simply demurred, so watch for more to potentially come.
Were you one of those kids who taught themselves to identify cars at night by their headlights and taillights? I was. I was also one of those kids with a huge box of Hot Wheels and impressive collection of home-made Lego hot rods. I asked my parents for a Power Wheels Porsche 911 for Christmas for years, though the best I got was a pedal-powered tractor. I drove the wheels off it. I used to tell my friends I’d own a “slug bug” one day. When I was 15, my dad told me he would get me a car on the condition that I had to maintain it. He came back with a rough-around-the-edges 1967 Volkswagen Beetle he’d picked up for something like $600. I drove the wheels off that thing, too, even though it was only slightly faster than the tractor. When I got tired of chasing electrical gremlins (none of which were related to my bitchin’ self-installed stereo, thank you very much), I thought I’d move on to something more sensible. I bought a 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT and got my first speeding ticket in that car during the test drive. Not my first-ever ticket, mind you. That came behind the wheel of a Geo Metro hatchback I delivered pizza in during high school. I never planned to have this job. I was actually an aerospace engineering major in college, but calculus and I had a bad breakup. Considering how much better my English grades were than my calculus grades, I decided to stick to my strengths and write instead. When I made the switch, people kept asking me what I wanted to do with my life. I told them I’d like to write for a car magazine someday, not expecting it to actually happen. I figured I’d be in newspapers, maybe a magazine if I was lucky. Then this happened, which was slightly awkward because I grew up reading Car & Driver, but convenient since I don’t live in Michigan. Now I just try to make it through the day without adding any more names to the list of people who want to kill me and take my job.
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