The new Land Rover Range Rover Sport SV is just around the corner – the official debut is scheduled for May 31 – but until it arrives, the “regular” Range Rover Sport is the most powerful version of the model money can buy. How good is it? It’s time to finally find out thanks to a new drag race with a German SUV competitor.
This new video from Sam CarLegion on YouTube shows us the Range Rover Sport drag racing a Mercedes-AMG GLE 53. Again, this isn’t the most powerful variant of the vehicle, which makes it the perfect rival for the hot British SUV. Before we see the actual race, let’s take a look at the numbers, though.
The Range Rover Sport has a very familiar engine – in the P530 trim, there’s a BMW-sourced 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 under the hood with 523 horsepower (390 kilowatts) and 553 pound-feet (750 Newton-meters) of torque. This output is delivered to all four wheels via an eight-speed automatic transmission and an AWD system. On paper, the model can hit 60 miles per hour in 4.3 seconds with Dynamic Launch engaged.
Against it, the hot SUV from Stuttgart offers 429 hp (320 kW) and 384 lb-ft (520 Nm) of torque, coming from an electrified 3.0-liter inline-six turbo gas engine. This is a step below the full-blown AMG 63 model, which comes with the brand’s 4.0-liter V8. Nevertheless, it’s still a potent machine, capable of doing 0-60 mph sprints in around 5.3 seconds.
So, which big and heavy SUV wins this race? Of course, we are not going to spoil the results for you and we will just tell you the quarter-mile drag times. The winner covered the race in 12.9 seconds, while the second-placed model did it 0.3 seconds slower.
