Why the Land Rover Defender OCTA is the world's most bonkers SUV

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.

But 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.

The day promised a selection of activities, though only one properly captured the OCTA's USP. 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.

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And so after an early-morning flight and a short shuttle, we were at the 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.

Not-so-wealthy auto journalists were only in attendance for a short period of an otherwise multi-day experience tailored towards Land Rover owners – both current and potential. Still, we were more than happy to tag along and pretend like we fitted in.

The day's outline was simple: small groups would cycle through a rotation of three activities, each intended to expose the Defender's strengths and versatility in different ways. Several Defenders were on hand, but the OCTA was the star of the show.

You may be wondering what an OCTA even is. Put simply, it's a heavily beefed-up Defender with 33-inch all-terrain tyres, greater ground clearance, and a noticeably wider track than the standard Defender.

It has quad exhaust outlets, unique adaptive dampers, a BMW-sourced mild-hybrid 4.4-litre twin-turbo petrol V8, a performance-focused off-road setting called 'OCTA Mode' and – believe it or not – launch control. You only get 100 launches in the OCTA's lifetime, though.

And, of course, it is insanely expensive. It earns the distinction of being the most expensive vehicle I've ever driven, a fact that sat a bit less comfortably after other attendees, who had been to the facility before, told stories of local trees and wildlife that often misunderstood the concept of personal space.

Not to worry, because JLR naturally employed an army of experienced and charismatic instructors to help us along. So after a quick lunch, it was time to roll.

First up for my group was the skid pan. Here, the organisers had laid out something of a motorkhana course with two slaloms, short acceleration zones, and tight hairpins. Oh, and the water sprinklers were on.