Land Rover Defender Octa review

The small box beneath the centre console crackled into life. ‘Right, Andrew, two hours fast gravel.’ The voice on the radio belonged to David Sneath who has been curating and leading Land Rover-based adventures the world over for 45 years.

It was David who, 20 years ago, was standing beside an enormous dune on the west coast of Morocco as I launched his Freelander 2 over the top, into the air and then nose down into the sand with terminal consequences for the car but, happily, not our relationship. We still giggle about it to this day. But that was a story from another time and from the other end of this continent. Because right now we are somewhere between Cape Town and the Namibia border. A place to make the middle of nowhere seem rather busy.

I’m in a new Land Rover Defender Octa and I really don’t want this adventure to go the same way as that one, even if the headline for the resulting story, ‘Octa Gone’, would have just about written itself. The reason we’re here is because it’s one of surprisingly few places at this time of year offering long hours of daylight, reasonable access from the UK and every kind of terrain upon which a car like this could ever be asked to perform. Such as two hours fast gravel.