You won’t hear a lot about the Renegade Sport but it’s one of Ski-Doo’s absolute best second sleds. The Renegade designation means it is a versatile sled with multiple uses.
Primarily, it’s a trail sled but because of its XP roots, it’s an amazingly good trail sled. This means it handles like it’s on rails, is incredibly light and has enough advanced design and technology to keep the competition at bay for the next decade. You can take this sled out into deep powder and not have to worry about digging out for hours, too.
The Sport’s ACE 600 produces tight-fisted fuel economy and spins out an adequate and somewhat torquey 60-horses. If you want to shave the price by several hundred dollars, you can go for the Renegade Sport powered by Ski-Doo’s Rotax 550 fan-cooled 2-stroke.
We think the ACE Sport is such a good sled we’d gladly spend the extra bucks for it. When riding the ACE 600, you can feel its MX-Z roots, with very sharp turn-in and feather-light steering input. It’s Motion Control gas cell shocks offer near-perfect calibration for riding all kinds of trail junk at every speed.
Throttle response is linear and predictable from this pint-sized (by today’s standards) EFI 600 4-stroke. Cold starting is easy and consistent and the sled never, ever burps at idle. In fact, its start and idle behavior is completely user-friendly.
Here’s a bonus: On trails, this sled is surprisingly quick. You won’t be making apologies for holding up your friends riding bigger displacement sleds. It’s truly about power-to-weight and what the Sport lacks in power, it makes up for in lightness. The end result is surprising performance.
The Renegade Sport 550 fan comes with trail friendly essentials like RER reverse and can be optioned with electric start. On the ACE version, the uptick in price gets you the same net horsepower but a sweet, super-light 4-stroke with EFI, electric start and reverse.
Surprisingly, both also include a 1-inch deep Camoplast RipSaw track that’s 137-inches long – definitely an upgrade for a sled in this price range. There’s even an analog gauge package with a tach included. The point is this is not a cheesy, cheapo sled. Five years ago this snowmobile would have represented the ultimate equipment load for a performance snowmobile.
We’ve often said: the best thing about buying any XP-based sled is that you’re getting the technology of tomorrow, today. The Renegade Sport is a very advanced piece of equipment and its all-aluminum, rider forward design is a benefit that filters down from the top of the Renegade product line to the baseline model here.
As a second sled, the Sport is a snowmobile everyone in the family will love.
