“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” I thought, looking at the 2025 Can-Am Outlander XT-P 1000R. Do you know how many production ATVs have triple-digit HP figures?
One. This one.
I’ve been face-to-face with a lot of crazy machinery throughout my career. I won’t say that riding the world’s fastest production personal watercraft (PWC) or a race-prepped Yamaha YXZ1000R SS around one of the most famous race tracks in the US didn’t dilate my pupils. But at least I knew what I was supposed to do with those machines to put them to the test.
As I hopped on and looked around the densely-packed woodlands of British Columbia for the entrance to a trail, I couldn’t imagine a world where I could open this monster up, or ride it in an exciting way without hitting every tree in the province.
I felt like a baby who’d been given a bazooka.
Although I wasn’t ripping the Outlander as I learned the trail with one of Can-Am’s brand ambassadors, I very quickly began to see that I possibly could. And, before long, I was.
But, first, I had to mentally get over the size of it. All 1,000 pounds of it.
Tight Trails
There is no getting around it, when you climb onto the Outlander it’s a bloody beast. And if I had seen the trails before heading out on them, there’s no way I’d have thought myself capable of conquering them on this behemoth. But once I was out there in the group, there was literally no going back, and thankfully so.
I set the 999cc V-twin powerplant’s delivery to Normal mode, so as to hopefully not get caught off-guard by the 101 HP or 69 lb-ft of torque on tap. In case you can’t already tell, I was nervous. I love all powersports, but I think I give ATVs far more respect than any other vehicles because growing up, these are how most of my friends hurt themselves. But this nervousness couldn’t have been more misplaced.
Staring at an off-camber turn that dropped by about four feet, I paused and thought, “Just take it like you know you should, and if it starts to roll, jump.” When I tell you the Outlander didn’t blink, I mean that it felt like it could’ve almost taken the turn without me operating it. And that’s when I realized just how far ATVs had come since I last rode one, and began questioning where this one's limitations were.
Steep elevation and camber changes, along with tight full-lock turns and literal jumps, followed. As things got more difficult, I became even calmer. The trail was physically demanding with so many full-lock turns mixed with flat-out open sections, but since I put the power steering to its easiest setting, my arms weren’t getting tired at all.
Another movement that’d normally drain me would be loading up the rear tires to get enough traction to make it up some of these slippery inclines. But with 4WD, so much torque on tap, and a new pulley in the CVT that gives about 20% more torque to the rear wheels, I really just had to point and shoot.
For a bazooka, this thing somehow navigated its way through a tight forest untouched, and I doubt I was very much help. But it’s one thing lugging this beast around a relatively tight trail, and another entirely when you get onto a fast, sweeping gravel road.
Thank God for Sway Bars
The next treat Can-Am had in store for me was the open road, well, a gravel road. And after becoming comfortable on the Outlander XT-P 1000R through the trails earlier in the day, I was giddy to open it up and find its limitations.
There’s so much initial torque—rolling burnouts on tap on pavement kind of torque—that you don’t expect what’s waiting for you high in the rev range. That’s where Can-Am has hidden the XT-P 1000R’s industry-leading 101 HP. So, even though I’d flicked it into Sport mode, when I was expecting the power output to calm down, it only got more intense.
This thing will get from 0-60 mph in 5.9 seconds, so when our group was making its way up these relatively fast gravel roads at anywhere between 20-40 mph, deciding to drift was just that—a decision. And it all started with little blips.
A blip here, a blip there, and before too long, I was in full opposite lock wondering if three or four wheels were in contact with the ground. I can say categorically, that there’s no way I’d have gotten this comfortable so quickly unless the Outlander XT-P 1000R had front and rear sway bars.
It sounds strange to say, but at times this thing handled like a car. I mean, that tipping point that you feel when you lean too far back on a chair, the one that sometimes comes on ATVs, well, it never came. That’s partially down to the sway bars and also a new chassis design—this generation of Outlander is about 95% new. But, the change that likely kept me right side up was the new double A-arm system that replaced the old torsion trailing arm.
Without getting into the nitty gritty of physics, the new double A-arm system keeps the ATV’s actual center of gravity closer to the rolling center of gravity when rounding a bend. This along with the Fox suspension all round is what prevents that moment of tipping-point anxiety when you throw the Outlander into a fast corner.
By the end of my time with the Outlander, I dared to wonder how good I could get at drifting if I had one for a while, and I thought the same about jumping.
Utility By Name, Not By Nature
There’s something disconcerting about jumping a vehicle, which is basically made for one person, that weighs about half a ton. It’s like jumping the heaviest Harley you can find. And those uneasy feelings are multiplied when there’s a gap to jump over—come up short and you’re straight over the handlebars. But when it came time to jump the Outlander XT-P 1000R, I wasn’t even sure that I’d gotten air, that’s how smooth the landing was.
I went back to the photographer to make sure that I was actually in the air, and he assured me I was. And he wasn't lying. But that’s how good the FOX† 1.5 Podium† QS3 shocks are, with the front having 10.8 inches of travel, while there are 12 inches on offer at the rear. These shocks, which you can adjust with the turn of a clicker, combined with the way the negative camber works with the double A-arm suspension make for eerily stable landings.
Again, this thing is a bazooka, and everything we threw at it was treated as childsplay.
So much power, so much cornering ability, and performance suspension—if the Outlander XT-P 1000R didn’t look like it could invade a country, you’d swear it was an overweight sports ATV. In fact, I think it is.
Sport ATVs are more or less dead, save for Yamaha’s Raptor. But it doesn’t feel right to call the Outlander XT-P 1000R a “utility ATV”. Yes, it’ll tow up to 1,830 lbs. But it’ll also drift around corners at 40-plus mph before happily becoming airborne. Hell, it’ll get to 60 mph just half a second after a Subaru BRZ.
The ATV For Me
I lost a lot of interest in ATVs a long time ago when the sporty models were dying off one by one. I get them as a utility vehicle, in fact, they probably make more sense as utility vehicles than UTVs for lots of folks. But it’s hard to see where they fit into a gearhead’s life—my life. Yet, the Outlander XT-P 1000R made me get, and even want, an ATV again.
The last thing my group did was go on a golden hour ride to the top of a mountain. It took about 45 minutes and had just about every type of terrain you could imagine, from shale to jumps and natural sections of whoops. In a truck, this would’ve been hell. On the Outlander XT-P 1000R, it was an adrenaline junkie’s heaven and highlighted its sporting prowess and capability. The way back down showed the vehicle’s other side.
With the engine braking mode on full and a gel seat to relax into, I was able to make my way down the mountain in a relaxed state and think about who’d benefit from spending $20,199 on an Outlander XT-P 1000R. And here it is.
If you’re just looking for a utility vehicle, save thousands and get one. If you need a utility vehicle and also have access to land that you can rally across, and want to rally across, the Outlander XT-P 1000R will let you do all that with just one vehicle. It’s an ATV for those of us who don’t mind taking it easy when work calls, but want to be able to annihilate terrain on a whim with child-like exuberance.
It’s for the babies who want bazookas.
