Land Rover Range Rover Sport Buyer's Guide
The Range Rover Sport is the great depreciation machine of the premium SUV world, and our numbers show both ends of the slide: four sold results spanning £8,000 to £38,500 with the median at £10,200. That median buys a first-generation diesel that cost six figures' worth of aspiration when new; whether it buys a good one is the entire question with this car.
Know your generations
Three generations. The L320 (2005–2013) sits on the Discovery 3's integrated body-frame platform: heavy, hugely capable off road, and offered with the 2.7 TDV6, the later 3.0 SDV6, the 3.6 TDV8, and 4.2 then 5.0 supercharged petrol V8s (390 and 510hp respectively in the catalogue). Our 2010 TDV6 HSE at £10,500 and 2012 SDV6 HSE at £9,900 are typical of where these now sit.
The L494 (2013–2022) moved to an aluminium monocoque, shed a serious amount of weight, and drives like a different species. Diesels ran from the SDV6 (306hp) to the SDV8 (339hp), with the 510hp 5.0 supercharged petrol, the 575hp SVR and, from 2018, the P400e plug-in hybrid. Our strongest result, £38,500 for a 2015 SDV8, belongs here; our weakest, £8,000 for a 2015 HSE Dynamic, shows how wide the condition spread already is within the same generation and year.
The L461 (2022 on) is the current car (D300, P400, P440e, P530, and the 626hp SV) and appears in our data only as active lots, not sold results.
What to pay
Four sales: £8,000, £9,900, £10,500 and £38,500, median £10,200. Read that as roughly £8,000 to £10,500 for L320-era diesels and ordinary-condition early L494s, with strong-spec L494 V8 diesels capable of £38,500. Active listings support the middle ground: a 2013 SDV6 HSE Dynamic offered at £17,389, a 2017 TDV6 SE estimated at £15,000 to £20,000, and a 2022 car estimated at £43,000 to £44,000. One 2022 lot carries an estimate of just £3,300 to £3,700, which on a three-year-old car can only mean serious damage or title trouble; treat any Range Rover Sport priced far below its cohort as having a story you need to hear in full.
What goes wrong
The 2.7 TDV6 (2005–2011) has a documented appetite for crankshaft and big-end failure, often without warning; a replacement engine costs more than our £10,200 median car is worth, so evidence of regular oil changes is not optional. The 3.0 SDV6 improved matters but crank issues did not vanish entirely, and its turbos and EGR system age expensively. Air suspension is a fact of life on all of them: compressors, height sensors and, on older cars, leaking struts. L320s also suffer electric parking brake module failures and corroding tailgates. On the 5.0 supercharged petrol, early engines are known for timing chain guide wear and supercharger nose-cone bearing noise; both are fixable, neither is cheap. L494s add complex electronics (infotainment, keyless, parking systems) that fail in undramatic but costly ways. On any of them, a thick folder of specialist history is worth more than any individual option.
Our view
An L320 diesel around our £10,200 median is a huge amount of car for the money and a rolling liability in equal measure; buy the history, not the car, and walk away from anything vague about oil services. The car with a future is the L494 SDV8: the last of the big V8 diesels, genuinely long-legged, and the variant our top result at £38,500 already flags as the one the market rates. The 2.7 TDV6 at the bottom of the market is cheap because it is ruinous, and we would say so to anyone who asks.
