Is 40 old? I was told my whole life that 40 was old. Then I had a birthday and nothing happened. The gradual increase in pain that started when I hit my mid-30s didn’t speed up. I didn’t suddenly start agreeing with David Brooks. None of the stuff I was warned about was lurking on the other side of the calendar.
Most of the time, I feel great. I can lift more, I get into fewer dumb arguments online, and I still am somewhat aware of what modern music is. This isn’t to say that there’s been no change. If your favorite part of drinking is the hangover, then you’ll be excited to learn that you can save money and recreate the dull ache of a night of lubricated excess merely by being vertical after about 11:00 pm.
I didn’t really notice a serious change until recently, when Land Rover allowed me to borrow its nipple-hair-raising, high-performance Defender OCTA for a week. An earlier version of myself would probably say that the best supercar you could get for about a quarter-million dollars would be an Artura or a 911 GT3 RS. Those are good options.
This is a better one.
[Full disclosure: Land Rover gave me a Defender Octa for a week with the understanding that I’d write a review and put fuel in it before returning it. Also, it snowed, finally.]
The Basics
Engine: 4.4-liter turbo V8 w/ 48-volt hybrid system
Transmission: 8-speed automatic transmission
Drive: All-wheel drive w/ a two-speed transfer case
Output: 626 horsepower, 553 lb-ft of torque
Fuel Economy: 15 MPG city, 19 MPG highway, 17 MPG combined
Base Price: $167,800
Price As-Tested: $170,200 (including $1,625 shipping/handling)
Why Does This Car Exist?
Ok, here’s another sign that maybe I’m old. A few of these photos will feature important places or figures from the Revolutionary War. I’ve been deep in the history, including doing my second pass through David McCullough’s 1776 as well as visiting historic sites.
The photo above is from a Revolutionary War-themed trivia night I went to, and as proof, here’s me and George Washington:
While a comparison between the Defender OCTA and the 64-gun HMS Asia probably would be amusing to twelve people, by the end of my week with the car, my basic sense was that this is basically a supercar, and it’s the supercar I’d buy if I had the money.
If you don’t know what OCTA is, I don’t blame you. My mind immediately jumped to the never-once-complained-when-my-kid-wanted-to-watch-it animated series Octonauts. OCTA is an abbreviation, but represented in all caps like it’s an acronym. This is short for octahedron, which represents the eight sides of a diamond, because a diamond is tough and beautiful.
To let you know that this is an OCTA Defender, there’s even a “gloss black diamond within a machined and sandblasted titanium disc on each Signature Graphic pane.”
This is a ridiculous thing to do, which is just more of a reason why I think it’s a great supercar. There are so many boring high-performance sports cars that feel interchangeable. This is just the right amount of nonsensical flourish to make it feel special. I’m sorry, but your Huracan is boring if it doesn’t have a little diamond in a titanium disc. I don’t make the rules.
While the name is ludicrous, this is the same company that brought us the Land Rover Range Rover Velar SVA Autobiography Dynamic Edition. Points for brevity, I suppose.
More than the name or the window trinkets, what’s exceptional about the OCTA is that nothing about this is at all half-assed. This isn’t just a big motor in a Defender. This is a thoughtful, full-cheeked attempt at making something truly great. And it is. It’s truly great. One of the best cars I’ve driven in a long time, and I’m already in the bag for the Defender.
The easy thing for Land Rover to do would have been to utilize the already loud and capable 5.0-liter V8 found in other Defenders, squeeze some extra power out of it, and call it a day. That’s not what they did. This has the smaller twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8 from BMW (making this a distant cousin of the also fantastic Alpina XB7).
This is a no-corners-cut, we-thought-of-everything attempt at taking a Defender to its most illogical end without sacrificing most drivability.
How Does It Look?
The photo above shows the Defender parked in the snow outside the Phillips Manor Hall Historic Site in Yonkers, New York. Frederick Philipse was one of the richest people in America and owned about half of Westchester County. Though the family comes from Holland, as soon as the British took over New York, Phillipse was like, “The Netherlands? I nether heard of them!” Unfortunately for him, his nephew Fred III didn’t inherit that kind of flexibility and signed something called “The Declaration of Dependence” to show how loyal he was to the Brits. Oops! After the American Revolution, the family was told to clear out of America and relinquish all its lands or face death.
This is all to say, sometimes people make bad choices. The designers at Land Rover, realizing the stock Defender already looks the business, didn’t screw with the basic design too much. The most obvious visual cue that this is an Octa is the vehicle’s wider track, with the axles capped off by handsomely purposeful 20-inch forged alloy wheels wrapped in BF Goodrich Trail-Terrain tires (there’s an optional Goodyear Wrangler RT tire if you’re really going for it, but I’d stay away from the 22-inch wheel, which looks wrong to me).
Because of the extra width, you get the Raptor trick of putting lights in the grille, which has become a bit of a visual cliche but works here for reasons I don’t fully understand. Perhaps it’s because the grille already has a sort of zoomed-in 8-bit pixel look?
The front and rear bumpers are subtly modified to allow for a better approach and departure angle, if that’s your thing.
I was specifically given the OCTA Edition One, which has a couple of specific touches. For instance, it has a Faroe Green paint is just this side of matte gray, but it will catch the sun in just the right way to allow some of the bronzier green tint to come through.
If you like the Defender, you’ll enjoy this Wellington-sized beefy boy. If you don’t like the Defender, you’re a simple-minded philistine who will never get it.
What’s It Like Inside?
Full cards on the table here, the first time I saw the raw carbon fiber seats, I chuckled to myself a little bit. Fill up the tank with premium and toss an English Foxhound in the front seat, and this brute weighs in at about 430 stone (or 6,000 pounds).
The idea that the seats are the heavy part of this car is laughable. It’s entirely a flex, and it’s a flex I enjoyed anytime I opened up the car. And this is maybe the Defender’s secret power. I’ve mentioned this before, but most people don’t want to talk to you when you’re driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. For all the capabilities, this car has a Michael Caine sort of toughness. He’ll thrash you as good as any, and do it in such style you’re as impressed as you are bruised.
People kept asking me to open the doors, and they oohed and aahed at the carbon seats. My daughter gets ferried in a new car to school nearly every week, and she insisted that this will be the next car we buy. When I tried to explain to her that if we paid the new cost for this vehicle, we’d have to sleep in it, she insisted she could cuddle up just fine in the backseat.
Otherwise, the Defender in OCTA trim is easily recognizable as every other Defender. The car proudly sports an “Ultrafabrics” interior, which is to say a PETA-approved vegan “leather.” In the cold, it bothered me not at all. I do wonder if it wouldn’t trend towards sweat-inducing in warmer weather.
The windows lining the roof are a throwback to the original Defender and, especially with the dark interior, provide a nice bit of natural light without the glare of a sunroof or moonroof.
It’s a comfortable and attractive place to be. The most unsupercar thing about the Defender, I suppose, is that I could drive this across the Sahara and not need to stop for a lower lumbar adjustment.
How Does It Drive?
Like any true elder supercar owner, I drove this approximatley 90% like a responsible adult and 10% like an utter moron. It helped immensely that it finally snowed so that I could confidently slide the big SUV around.
As a normal luxury SUV it does a great job of driving like a normal luxury SUV. It does not feel as heavy as it is, and a lot of that is due to the “6D Dynamics” system, which is what Land Rover calls its most advanced suspension setup. Remember, this bad boy isn’t a Jeep or an Ineos. It may take some shade from hardcore off-roaders for its fully independent suspension, but it makes it extraordinarily livable, and with the adjustable air springs and active dampers, incredibly flat in turns.
Something like a Raptor can also feel like a supercar at times, but it’s a truck underneath, and there’s no forgetting that. With this, you can kind of forget what it’s truly capable of, and like a maple branch dragged along that titanimum disc hanging off the side, I barely scratched the surface of the OCTA.
That being said, I did hit the OCTA button below the steering wheel more times than the situation called for, especially since I wasn’t planning to do any off-road launches. It’s just deeply satisfying to feel the BMW-sourced 4.4-liter V8 pop off. It doesn’t sound quite as good as the 5.0-liter, but it’s a better match for this particular SUV. In theory, under this launch mode, you get a little extra torque and can hit 60 mph in under 4 seconds. 
I didn’t time it, but every launch I did in the Land Rover was hilarious. As was shuffling the big tires around snowy parking lots and sideroads when the car was empty (I did this once when the car was full and had to apologize to my passengers).
At the same time, I didn’t hesitate at all to drive this thing slowly and carefully in less-than-ideal wintry conditions. Even on the highway, with the road starting to glaze over, the combo of the tough tires and well-programmed traction control gave me incredible confidence.
Don’t Tell My Kid, But This Isn’t Even A Bad Deal
As much as I like the raw carbon fiber look, I don’t think you necessarily need this exact edition of the truck. The cheapest OCTA you can buy is the best OCTA you can get, and a non-blacked-out one in Sargasso Blue is in the realm of an Alpina XB7 at $160k.
When compared to other high-performance five-passenger SUVs and wagons, you have some interesting choices. An Urus is faster and more exotic, though more expensive. A Cayenne Turbo GT is also pricier and, if you’re going to track it for some reason, obviously the better choice. A BMW M5 Touring is a cool alternative, no doubt, but spendy.
I put it in a category with those cars, as well as an entry-level supercar, and in that context, it’s a reasonable deal, inasmuch as anything that’s not a Honda Civic Hybrid is a good deal.
Maybe I shouldn’t feel this way. Maybe it’s my age speaking. Maybe you disagree. That’s fine. Another perk of being my age is that I don’t need you to agree with me.
All photos: Matt Hardigree unless otherwise noted. The good photos are not me, basically.
This review is a 100% accurate take on being 40, Octonauts, and presumably this car as well.
Is it me or do the doors not line up very well with the body panels in that picture of the rear three quarter view photo?
Literally inconceivable.
This would already be a tough sell for me over an Escalade V, but this level of cheapening is unconscionable at this price point.
UPON REVIEW, semi aniline leather is offered, the fake stuff is merely an option. Still ridiculous, but somewhat defendable (ha).
“I drove this approximatly 90% like a responsible adult and 10% like an utter moron”
This is a good aspiration on both sides of the equation: if you drive it MORE than 10% like a moron, whoa, you’ve got neighbors and obligations, dial it back. If you’re more than 90% responsible, come on, loosen up a little, will Miss Daisy complain from the back?
…and just like a supercar, it ain’t for me. Especially where I live. Yes, out west you have rocks and mountains and dunes. Here, we have mud, square bodies, and domestic beer.