Range Rover Sport PHEV is too heavy to cope with moose test

The current Land Rover Range Rover Sport is one of the newest additions to the performance SUV segment. The British machine comes with either a plug-in hybrid powertrain or a twin-turbo V8 sourced from BMW. It has sporty aspirations but isn’t it a little too heavy to be fast in the corners? It’s time to find out.

In the United Kingdom, the PHEV model has a potent electrified system with a peak output of 434 bhp (323 kilowatts) and 619 pound-feet (839 Newton-metres) of torque. This is enough for a sprint from a standstill to 60 miles per hour (0-96 kilometres per hour) in just 5.5 seconds but a straight-line acceleration is always an easier task than cornering. Our colleagues at km77.com decided to see how good the new Range Rover Sport is on the moose test.

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What they used for their evaluation was a Range Rover Sport P510e, which is a slightly more powerful version of the same PHEV model.with 503 bhp (375 KW). It rode on 23-inch wheels with all-season Pirelli Scorpion 0 tyres. The tested example weighed exactly 3,030 kilograms (6,680 pounds) without the driver with an almost perfect weight balance of 49.2 percent/50.8 percent front-back distribution.

Even though the suspension of the Range Rover Sport has been revised compared to the regular Range Rover, the performance SUV had zero chances of covering the moose test with a speed of 46.6 mph (75 kph) – not even its electronic stability systems were able to keep it on track without hitting any cones. The driver said the vehicle felt much more controllable than the Range Rover, which km77.com also tested recently, but the RR Sport was just too heavy.

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After a few attempts, the driver managed to cover the moose test at a speed of 42.9 mph (69 kph), which is an acceptable result, especially when compared to the 39 mph (63 kph) achieved by the regular Range Rover. The test clearly showed that the sportier model was much more agile with less notable body roll and understeer. Still, the weight of the plug-in hybrid SUV made it impossible for higher speeds to be reached.