Land Rover Defender Octa

Forget conventional supercars... Land Rover's 626bhp super-SUV has arrived to bring a far more outrageous kind of performance to the evo fleet

- Richard Browne

OF ALL THE NEW CARS TO BE LAUNCHED THIS YEAR, the Defender Octa piqued my interest more than most. New Ferraris and Lambos are all well and good, but you kind of know what to expect. But a 600-plus bhp Defender built with Dakar homologation in mind? Now that is something different.

Despite repeated overtures and increasingly unsubtle hints, editor-in-chief Gallagher failed to send me on any of the Octa launch events. Indeed, it wasn't until KP25 EUZ arrived that I'd so much as sat in Land Rover's souped-up Defender. To say I was excited is an understatement.

This is an Edition One spec - reserved for the first year of production - which means Faroe Green bodywork, in this instance wrapped with factory-fit satin PPF. Inside there's Khaki and Black upholstery in what Land Rover calls Ultrafabrics - a sustainable, vegan-friendly polyurethane material engineered in Japan. Feeling and looking like a cross between neoprene and soft leather, it helps to maintain a neutral body temperature (lovely in this year's heatwave) and is far more luxurious than it sounds. Chopped carbon and gloss black detailing complete the Edition One's curated design package.

The 20-inch forged alloys have a really nice motorsport look to them; not quite turbofans, but tough and functional, as you'd expect for what is effectively the Defender equivalent of a 911 GT3. There's a choice of two off-road-biased tyres for the 20s, plus a set of road-focused all-weather tyres for the 22-inch rims you can also spec for your Octa. We're currently running on Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac RTs but I'll try to persuade Land Rover to stick EUZ on the 22s for a month or so for the full breadth of on- and off-road experience.