There’s a new Defender arriving soon, and it looks like this one is going to be a Monster Land Rover. I don’t like calling it JLR. It is teasing a new version of The Defender that the automaker promises to be the toughest, most capable, and most luxurious Defender ever.
We don’t know much about it other than that the defender is called the Defender OCTA, and it will make its full debut on July 3rd.
Well, we do know a few other things beyond the somewhat odd name. It seems the Land Rover Engineers have truly been putting the development mules through an insane amount of testing.
This Beast has been pushed to its limit over wet French roads and rally stages, Sweden’s icy Trails, the never-ending sand dunes in Dubai, rock crawling routes in Moab, and even on the green hell itself, the Nürburgring.
So, it seems pretty clear that the Defender OCTA will be a capable and entertaining Adventure vehicle across pretty much every surface thrown its way
And then there will be promising power on tap too. Of course, there’s no power figure, but we do know what will provide the power: a mild hybrid-assisted twin-turbocharged V8. And if we do some pretty basic sleuthing, we can probably work out which iteration of V8 this will be.
Over on the Range Rover side of the family, there’s a model called the SV Edition 1 that has a 4.4 L twin-turbocharged V8, which cranks out a massive 626 horsepower and 553 lb feet of torque. That’s enough thrust to get the SV Edition 1 moving from 0 to 60 mph in the mid-3-second range, which is pretty wild.
Another feature that will be utilized on the Defender OCTA is the suspension setup referred to as the 6D Dynamic suspension system.
The gist of the system is an air suspension that pairs with a hydraulic stabilizer system. Think McLaren level goodness here in terms of flat cornering on the road but with the added bonus of potentially awesome articulation levels out on the trail.
A massively powerful engine, slick suspension capability, and insane levels of multi-terrain tuning should deliver a truly outrageous Defender experience with this OCTA.
I don’t get the reason behind the name, but I’m sure it will be explained when the vehicle makes its full debut. As for the price, of course, we have no word on that just yet either, but the most you can spend right now, if you’re selecting a handful of options, would be on a Defender 130 V8, and you’d land north of 130k.
But the SV Edition one Range Rover I mentioned starts just over 180 Grand, so maybe an OCTA will live in the 140 to 150k space to start, or maybe I’m just being hopeful. Either way, just 1,000 units will land in the North American Market. This one is exclusive and special.
What I hope for it, though, is a proper set of wheels with actually useful tires like they give you on the outbound model and then the ability to pick an actual color beyond black or gray.
Otherwise, the potential power and capability the OCTA may unleash sound pretty damn promising. It could basically be a road-going version of a Bowler Defender, and that would be incredible.
