Why the Land Rover Defender OCTA feels like the most bonkers Defender yet

The useful part

Why the Land Rover Defender OCTA is the world's most bonkers SUV | CarExpert It's not often you get to experience the full capability of a model range as enduring as the Land Rover Defender. Such vehicles are stereotypically associated with high-income urban environments where owners already have a full garage of toys, used primarily for private-school drop-offs. It's even rarer to see something like the $305,200-plus Defender OCTA put through its paces in the real world.

How it works

• The idea was to feel how the OCTA's different drive modes behaved and to understand how the vehicle reacted to sharp changes of direction in low-grip conditions.
• Now, I understood where the grip was, and how much slip the OCTA was willing to allow.
• Following that, it was time to switch to my first non-OCTA Defender of the day: the endearing short-wheelbase, three-door Defender 90.
• Several Defenders were on hand, but the OCTA was the star of the show.
• That's what we've just done after Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) invited us to the RACQ Mobility Centre at Mount Cotton south of Brisbane to sample a small portion of the seemingly infinite Defender catalogue.

What to take from it

Not to worry, because JLR naturally employed an army of experienced and charismatic instructors to help us along. The Defender 'shorty' is fairly unique in the new-car world, and because it was fitted with the 313kW/550Nm 'P425' supercharged 5.0-litre V8, it had oodles of grunt. I'm grateful to have hopped straight into the 90 after the OCTA, because it clearly exposed the differences between the two.

Example or evidence

• With that in mind, I shuffle over to the second OCTA and repeat the process.
• A pair of red-neck wallabies barely gave the armada of Defenders any mind as we passed by just a few metres away.
• The others were intended to push the Defender out of its comfort zone in far harder driving than most owners would undertake on the streets of Toorak or Vaucluse.

Details worth keeping

So after an early-morning flight and a short shuttle, we were at the RACQ's driver training centre, where the bougie clubhouse and the clientele certainly reflect both the increasingly affluent location and the image of the Land Rover brand these days. A glance over the car park revealed the type of individuals this drive day had attracted. A plethora of high-end Range Rovers, a mint old-school Defender, and a mint (coloured) Ferrari all contributed to a temporary uptick in local land value.

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