The archive
Michigan State Police Vehicle Test Archive
Every Michigan State Police patrol vehicle test I have been able to source, transcribed from the original reports — thirty-seven years of them, from 1978 onward.
Once a year, since the middle of the 1970s, the Michigan State Police have taken every police vehicle the manufacturers will submit to a proving ground and a road course and measured them against each other. Acceleration to the hundredth of a second. Top speed, and the distance needed to reach it. Twenty braking stops. Thirty-two timed laps. Then a scoring formula converts all of it into a dollar figure that is added to each manufacturer’s bid.
It is not a magazine road test. It is a purchasing instrument, and that is exactly why it is trustworthy: the department has to buy the car it publishes numbers about. The results have shaped what American police forces drive for half a century.
These pages are the results, year by year, transcribed from the reports themselves rather than from anyone’s summary. Where a scan was damaged or a figure could not be recovered, the page says so instead of guessing.
1970s — the record barely exists
One surviving test year, and the federal research that surrounds it. Read the decade →
| Model year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1976 – 1977 — internal evaluations, never published, not located | |
| 1978 | A 440 Plymouth at 132.7 mph, two cars disqualified, and the bid adjustment printed as a price ‡ |
| 1979 — the first published report. Not located | |
The tests, year by year
Thirty-seven tests across five decades. Each year links to the full results — acceleration ladders, top speeds, braking, lap times, ergonomics and fuel economy, with the source report cited on the page.
1980s — The last of the big sedans
Rear-drive V8s, carburettors, and a qualification bar every car had to clear. The Mustang arrives as a police car and nobody quite knows what to do with it.
| 1980 | Gran Fury sweeps both classes at 124.6 mph; a wrecked Volare wins its class anyway |
| 1981 | Five full-size sedans, four mid-size V8s, and a Buick that could not reach 100 mph |
| 1982 | Six V8s in one class, a K-car curiosity, and a Mustang whose numbers were not printed |
| 1983 | The Mustang’s 132-mph debut, a propane-fuelled Canadian Plymouth, a slant-six Diplomat |
| 1987 | The bar goes up: two 139-mph Mustangs, and a quarter of a second ends the Diplomat’s bid |
| 1988 | The Diplomat comes back from the dead; a 5-speed Mustang runs 6.90 seconds to 60 |
| 1989 | Fuel injection reaches the 350 — and the carburetted M-bodies still clear the bar |
| 1984 – 1986 — tested and published, but never digitised — shelf only | |
‡ The 1978 figures come from a re-typeset table rather than an original report, and are flagged as unverified on that page.
1990s — The pony car years, and the end of the Caprice
The LT1 era at full song, the Mustang SSP’s farewell, the last Caprice at 139 mph — and then the first test in the programme’s history with no Caprice in it at all.
| 1993 | The Mustang SSP’s last stand beside the first LT1 Camaro; a Taurus qualifies by 0.01 sec |
| 1995 | The LT1 era at full song, and the first sport utility enters the programme |
| 1996 | The last Caprice runs 139 mph, and Ford brings a non-ABS car to prove what ABS is worth |
| 1997 | The first test with no Caprice in it; the Crown Victoria misses the bar by 0.05 seconds |
| 1998 | Speed limiters arrive on ten of fifteen vehicles, and Ford refuses to lap its own trucks |
| 1999 | The Crown Victoria becomes the Police Interceptor; the acceleration bar splits into classes |
| 1990 – 1992 — not digitised — shelf only | |
| 1994 — not digitised — shelf only | |
2000s — Front-wheel drive, Grattan, and the HEMI
The Impala replaces the Caprice, the tests move to a proper road course, Chrysler comes back, and a Dodge Charger takes every record worth having.
| 2000 | A front-drive Impala replaces the Caprice; a Volvo tuned with the CHP runs 153 mph |
| 2001 | The tests move to Grattan Raceway — and an AM General Hummer runs in the police category |
| 2002 | Mopar returns with the Intrepid, the pursuit Camaro leaves, two new cars miss on braking |
| 2003 | The Interceptor is rebuilt from the frame up; the lap-scoring method changes |
| 2004 | Two Interceptors, one axle ratio apart — and three cars within 0.11 seconds over two miles |
| 2005 | The Tahoe returns pursuit-rated, and an E85 patrol vehicle appears for the first time |
| 2006 | The HEMI Charger takes the top-speed record the Caprice had held for a decade |
| 2007 | Motorcycles enter the programme, and a BMW out-accelerates every car ever tested |
| 2008 | E85 across the whole category — identical performance, a third less range |
| 2009 | The field collapses to eight vehicles, and a Charger breaks six seconds to 60 |
2010s — The Panther dies and the Utility takes over
The Crown Victoria goes, Ford replaces one car with six, and by the end of the decade the fastest vehicle in the test is a sport utility.
| 2010 | The same eight cars, tested again — the archive’s cleanest year-on-year repeat |
| 2011 | The Caprice returns after fifteen years and beats everything in the test |
| 2012 | The Panther era ends; Ford brings six cars, and the brake test doubles in length |
| 2013 | E85 vanishes entirely, and a turbocharged Ford takes the fastest lap of the year |
| 2014 | Mid-year 2014.5 cars tested beside their own earlier versions; a 155-mph Caprice |
| 2015 | A retest printed in red, and a four-wheel-drive Tahoe that skipped the road course |
| 2016 | A four-cylinder police sedan, the first electric motorcycle, and a new braking record |
| 2017 | The Impala disappears — and Michigan’s own data exposes the speed limiters |
| 2018 | The first hybrid police sedan at 40 mpg, and the first pickup in the police category |
| 2019 | A 150-mph sport utility, two overheating Tahoes, and “pursuit rated” disowned in print |
2020s — No sedans left
Hybrids, pickups and the first battery-electric police vehicles — and the first tests in fifty years with no four-door saloon in them.
| 2020 | A Yamaha takes three archive records that had stood for nine years |
| 2025 | The first test in the programme’s history with no police sedan of any kind |
| 2026 | A Mustang returns as an electric crossover and stops shorter than anything ever tested |
| 2021 – 2024 — not yet in this archive | |
How the test works
Six categories, weighted. For most of the programme’s life the split has been vehicle dynamics 30, acceleration 20, braking 20, top speed 15, ergonomics and communications 10, fuel economy 5 — though the weights have moved. In 1980 fuel economy was worth 25 points and braking 10; by 2000 those had almost exactly swapped. The programme quietly shifted its points away from the categories that describe a pursuit and toward the ones that describe not crashing.
Scoring works by deviation. In each category the best vehicle becomes the benchmark and scores zero; everything else is penalised by how far short it falls, proportionally, multiplied by the category weight. Lower is better. Michigan then takes one percent of the lowest bid received, multiplies each vehicle’s total by that figure, and adds the result to its actual bid. The lowest adjusted bid wins the contract — and the state pays the real bid price, not the adjusted one.
Performance, in other words, does not win the contract outright. It buys a discount against the sticker.
A correction worth making
It is often written that these tests began in 1975. The department’s own books say otherwise, four times over. The 1980 report states that the Police Patrol Vehicle Evaluation and Purchasing Program “was developed in 1976 by the Policy Development and Evaluation Section of the Michigan Department of State Police, in cooperation with the Purchasing Division” — a statement made three years after the fact. The 1996 book calls itself the 20th annual evaluation, the 1999 book the 23rd year, the 2001 book the 25th. All four agree on a first comparative evaluation for the 1977 model year.
The 2019 book adds the part that reconciles it: the MSP began testing patrol cars in the 1950s, but only the vehicle with the lowest quotation was tested, against a pass-or-fail standard. When the quotations came in four dollars apart, the department decided to test every vehicle and compare them. Testing is older than the programme; the programme is what began in 1976.
What is missing, and why
1984 to 1986, 1990 to 1992, and 1994 were tested and published, but never digitised. They exist only as physical books. 2021 to 2024 are not yet in this archive.
Before 1980 is a different story rather than a missing one. The pre-1980 published record is not Michigan’s at all: it is the IACP’s National Law Enforcement Vehicle Evaluation Program, run in California in late 1978 under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which tested nine models in both federal and California emissions trim. That book and Michigan’s 1980 report were funded by the same federal grant — volumes one and two of a single series.
On “pursuit rated”
The phrase appears constantly in listings and advertising. Michigan’s own 2019 and 2026 books state plainly that it means nothing: there is no sanctioning body and no specific performance criteria behind it, pursuit capable is the more accurate phrase, and neither the Michigan State Police nor the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has the authority to award the term to any vehicle.
What Michigan does have is a purchasing specification, printed in the same books: 60 mph within 9.0 seconds, 80 within 14.9, 100 within 24.6; 110 mph within 4,838 feet and 120 mph within 8,985 feet; an average deceleration of 25.79 ft/s² across twenty stops; and completion of all thirty-two laps without major component failure. Meeting it certifies nothing. It justifies that a vehicle can do the job.