Everyone keeps calling the Defender OCTA an SUV.

It isn't.

It's a pub brawler wearing a Savile Row suit.

Most modern luxury off-roaders spend their lives outside artisan bakeries with tyres that have never met anything more threatening than a speed bump.
They advertise adventure while nervously avoiding puddles.

The OCTA doesn't seem particularly interested in appearances.

It looks as though somebody asked a group of engineers what would happen if they ignored the marketing department for six months and simply built the most ridiculous Defender they could imagine. Then, somehow, management signed it off.

The extraordinary thing isn't that it's quick.

Lots of things are quick.

What's extraordinary is that it remains unmistakably a Defender while doing things a Defender has absolutely no business doing.

It'll cross a flooded track, climb a mountain, carry a week's worth of camping gear and then embarrass sports saloons on the road home.

That's absurd. Wonderfully absurd.

Gravel sounds like gravel. Rain sounds like rain. Mud isn't an inconvenience - it's evidence.

You arrive filthy.

The car looks even better for it.

Because unlike most expensive machines, the OCTA doesn't lose character when it gets dirty.

It gains it. And perhaps that's the point.

Some cars are designed to be admired.

This one seems to prefer being used.