After A Week With The Land Rover Defender OCTA, These Are The Worst Things About It

After A Week With The Land Rover Defender OCTA, These Are The Worst Things About It

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There's a lot to like about the Land Rover Defender OCTA. It's the most extreme off-road vehicle Land Rover has ever built (for production, anyways). The huge V8, with its 626 horsepower and 553 lb-ft of torque, means this also feels like the most special Defender ever, and all the more so thanks to its aggressive bodywork and seriously cool bronze accents. Still, it's not a perfect experience, even at nearly $170,000.

CarPlay Never Really Worked For Long

This issue is likely specific to this car, but bears mentioning nonetheless. I'm not sure why, but wireless Apple CarPlay never really worked well. While it looked great, there were multiple failure points. During one drive, the map couldn't keep up with the car's real-world location when being displayed in the gauge cluster, leaving me without directions until I tabbed over to Maps in the center display, which caused CarPlay to crash mid-drive.

These mid-drive crashes happened a lot, usually accompanied by skips or pauses in media being played before my phone would simply disconnec...