LAND ROVER’S DEFENDER ‘OCTA’ IS A BI-TURBO V8 MEGA-LUX 4X4
The Land Rover, um, range is supposed to go like this: if you want the ultimate luxury 4x4, you buy a Range Rover. And if you want the ultimate utilitarian off-roader that’s also quite good on the road, you buy a Defender. And if you can’t afford either, try a Disco Sport, or a Velar, or an Evoque. You get the point.
Well, here to blur the lines between where a Range Rover stops and a Defender starts is this: the new Defender Octa. Named after the octahedron shape of a diamond (known for being y’know, well ‘ard but also precious) the Octa is the new flagship Defender, packing a twin-turbo mild-hybrid-boosted V8 engine under the bonnet.
No word on a power output just yet: the high five hundreds would give the Mercedes-AMG G-Wagen a bit of a headache. Land Rover’s also stuffed hydraulically cross-linked suspension in to enhance the car’s already stupendous off-roading prowess, while also promising less body roll, pitch and heave when you’re clogging the V8 on a twisty road.
Hopefully it’s not made the Defender too flat’n’firm – we reckon the current 90 is one of the most fun-to-drive workhorses around.
If you don’t want to make your mates sick, there are other ways to show off that you’ve got the diamond among Defenders. This is where Land Rover loses us a bit, if we’re honest. It waffles on about ‘a new encircled diamond graphic’ which has been stamped liberally across the bodywork and interior, ‘including as a gloss black diamond within a machined and sandblasted titanium disc’. Right. Good.
Keen to argue this isn’t merely a Defender for the Kardashians, the company says it’s busily tested the Octa in the snow and ice of Sweden, the Dubai desert, around the Nürburgring tarmac and on Moab rock crawls.
Prices, full specs and hopefully some proper images will be revealed later in the year. As for whether ‘Octa’ becomes a big JLR money-spinner, we’ll have to wait and see. Can’t see them giving many Jaguar’s the same treatment though. They’d have to call it an Octa-puss.