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 LongLike all Defenders, this one came equipped with wireless CarPlay (sort of).Chase BierenkovenThis 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 disconnect. Thankfully, the car's Bluetooth connection was rock solid, but the crashes did mean that any directions I had put into Apple or Google Maps were totally lost.Our Defender Showed Up With A Squeaky TrunkThe OCTA's spacious trunkChase BierenkovenAnother general build quality problem emerged while I was off-road in the OCTA, and then never really went away. The truck developed a squeak in the trunk, somewhere near the rear passenger quarter window. I took everything out of the car to try and get to the bottom of it, but never did. I didn't enjoy having to drown out this sound in the $170,000 luxury super SUV. Luckily, the Meridian sound system did a decent job.There's Still Too Much In The ScreensChase BierenkovenA more substantive critique, I think, is the lack of a few key physical controls that are still placed in the new 13.5-inch screen. The lumbar and bolster adjustments are located in there, which is just downright annoying to have to mess with. Other specifics, like drive mode fine-tuning, are also handled here, but what really irks me is that the camera button is here, right next to the settings menu. At least twice I reached for the cameras and got settings.Sometimes The Cameras Saw GhostsOCTA models get a litany of cameras that would make the Universal lot blushChase BierenkovenAnother glitch: When reversing or parking, the Defender's parking sensors started seeing ghosts. While I wasn't able to capture it, the cameras would display an object as being far too close, sounding alarms so you don't back into all the air behind the car. It happened twice while reversing, but the problem also persisted at the front of the car, though that only happened once.All The V8 Noise Is OutsideChase BierenkovenI think I might prefer this to fake engine noise, but it's still a problem. The Defender is so quiet, you can hardly hear the V8 at lower speeds. It takes a heavy foot to wake it up, even in the most sporty drive modes. Rock the car's drive mode selector into OCTA mode, and all those V8 pops and bangs aren't really much inside the cabin – they're like distant fireworks you're only barely aware of. For such an extreme car, I expected a lot more V8 noise in the cabin.
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