When you think about it, the new Defender OCTA is a relatively small blip on the Jaguar Land Rover radar. The impending relaunch of Jaguar as a luxury battery-electric brand, the introduction of the heavily trailed fully-electric Range Rover and even the resurrection of the Freelander nameplate in China are all probably much bigger, weightier concerns. But the manufacturer knows as well as anyone that it needs to build cars ‘with character’ - as Shaun Birch, JLR’s Senior Manager, Vehicle Dynamics reiterated from the driver’s seat at FoS - and alongside the new Range Rover Sport SV, that is very much the job of its heavily modified 635hp Defender.
Blink-and-you-miss-it passenger rides up the Duke of Richmond’s driveway are notoriously bad (no matter what you might have read) for telling you very much at all about what makes a new model tick, but the chance to be the first person outside the factory to sit in the car while it’s actually running - not to mention making its dynamic public debut - was not the sort of opportunity PH turns down. Especially as everyone we’ve spoken to who does work in the factory has a habit of going all glinty-eyed when discussing the OCTA, in a way that they typically don’t when asked to describe other things on the firm’s horizon.
This description certainly applies to Shaun, a man intimately involved with the car’s development and even more sensitive to damper settings and steering feel than the average PHer. His CV is nicely rounded: a lengthy shift at Aston was followed by an 18-month stint at McLaren (mostly focusing on the 750S) before he recently returned to JLR, where he originally cut his teeth on the F-Type. Amusingly, he has never driven up the famous Goodwood hill before. But he has spent a lot of time in the OCTA and, while reluctant to cut across the Duke’s lawn on his first-ever go, the fact that this possibility had been discussed internally beforehand confirms much that we already know about the rally-raid level of intent Land Rover has striven for.
Not that you’d know it straightaway. Unlike the supercharged V8 Defender, the OCTA does not fire up or idle or inch along a paddock with the same underlying menace. The 4.4-litre V8, already familiar from the SV (and a clutch of BMW M products, obviously) is as distant and as well-mannered as a Victorian nanny. Although that fact hardly seems to dampen the enthusiasm of the Goodwood crowd: ginormous chassis footprints and fattened arches tend to mark out any car as a must-see at FoS - and say what you like about the OCTA’s blunt force trauma look, but its styling is more than capable of shouldering some of the physical presence burden. Particularly on its silliest tyres.
Needless to say, the most aggressive all-terrain option, developed specially for the car with Goodyear, is not particularly beneficial when it comes to tarmac hill climb times - although Shaun shares the opinion of SVO Director, Jamal Hameedi: if you want to get to the heart of what OCTA is all about, they are the ones to go for. Yes, for accessing the outer limits of the car's off-road ability, but also because the lower outright grip levels tend to suit its newfound capacity for moving around under duress - especially when it’s in its rear-biasing, fun-having OCTA drive mode.
This, as you might expect, is the setting we spend 90 or so seconds in after I’ve been reminded by the ever-vigilant marshals to roll down the sleeves on my definitely not flameproof shirt. First impressions? Launch control in a Defender was always going to seem amusing, although it’s a measure of how hard the semi-active 6D Dynamics system is working from the off that it also doesn’t seem absurd (or absurdly boisterous). The standard model’s lively tendency to pitch is obviously being better contained, while the 4.4-litre V8’s capacity for getting you smartly up the road is on another level to the louder, lairier supercharged unit.
While sweeping statements regarding handling attributes are absolutely best avoided, very recent experience (i.e. that morning) of being a passenger in a current V8 Defender suggests that the overhauled chassis is as advertised: there’s tauter quality to the primary ride that you don’t need to be holding the steering wheel to appreciate, and Goodwood’s more famous corners leave you in no doubt that a) the interlinked dampers are meting out a level of body control that no current Defender owner would recognise, and b) Shaun, even while cautiously popping his FoS cherry, plainly doesn’t need to try very hard for the OCTA to begin to rotate.
Fun? Who knows - but it sure looks it. While still technically a prototype, Shaun says the model is effectively now set in tuning terms (although, true to form, he’s still nitpicking after the finish line). And it feels done. Or at any rate, from west of the driver’s seat, it feels very much like its own thing already - much as the new SV did. Hopefully it is telling that Shaun (not unlike everyone else we’ve spoken to) is willing to concede that the decision to not use the supercharged V8 has chamfered off that bit of rebellious charisma the OCTA might have otherwise had. Minor personality defects, after all, are easy to acknowledge when you're confident you’ve got a slam dunk on your hands.
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