Michigan test archive
2008 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test
Ethanol arrives across the whole police category — and the bill comes with it.
Nineteen vehicles again, including a pickup, a Suburban and three motorcycles. The structural change is that E85 stopped being a Tahoe curiosity and became a parallel range: Michigan tested a Ford Police Interceptor E85, a Chevrolet Impala 9C1 E85 and a Chevrolet Tahoe PPV E85 alongside their petrol equivalents.
The performance verdict is that ethanol costs almost nothing. The E85 Interceptor ran 8.25 seconds to 60 against the petrol car’s 8.36 and matched its 129 mph exactly; the E85 Impala ran 8.28 against 8.24 and 141 mph against 142; the E85 Tahoe was actually the quicker of its pair. On the road course the E85 cars were, if anything, marginally faster.
The fuel verdict is brutal. The Interceptor drops from 14 mpg city to 10 — a 29 percent loss. The Impala falls from 18 to 13, the Tahoe from 14 to 11. A patrol car that goes just as fast and stops just as well, and empties its tank a third sooner.
Elsewhere the Impala had quietly become the fastest thing in the category that isn’t a HEMI: 142 mph, 21.68 seconds to 100 — quicker to 100 than either Police Interceptor and faster on top than anything except the Charger 5.7.
The police category
| Vehicle | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dodge Charger 5.7L HEMI | 6.24 | 15.19 | 148 | 14.73 @ 98.35 | 1:37.94 | 26.94 | 143.7 |
| Dodge Magnum 5.7L HEMI | 6.35 | 15.82 | 131 | 14.84 @ 96.83 | 1:37.77 | 27.44 | 141.1 |
| Chevrolet Impala 9C1 3.9L | 8.24 | 21.68 | 142 | 16.25 @ 89.13 | 1:43.46 | 27.03 | 143.2 |
| Chevrolet Impala 9C1 3.9L (E85) | 8.28 | 21.61 | 141 | 16.29 @ 88.75 | 1:43.39 | ‡ | ‡ |
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV 2WD (E85) | 8.13 | 22.29 | 127 | 16.26 @ 87.03 | 1:43.62 | ‡ | ‡ |
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV 2WD | 8.24 | 22.79 | 127 | 16.35 @ 86.60 | 1:43.82 | 26.86 | 144.2 |
| Ford Police Interceptor (3.55 axle) | 8.17 | 22.20 | 120 | 16.29 @ 87.03 | 1:40.70 | 26.16 | 148.0 |
| Ford Police Interceptor (3.27 axle, E85) | 8.25 | 22.29 | 129 | 16.30 @ 87.40 | 1:40.59 | ‡ | ‡ |
| Ford Police Interceptor (3.27 axle) | 8.36 | 22.72 | 129 | 16.35 @ 87.03 | 1:40.78 | 26.97 | 143.6 |
| Dodge Charger 3.5L | 8.68 | 23.15 | 132 | 16.68 @ 86.28 | 1:41.74 | 27.25 | 142.1 |
| Dodge Magnum 3.5L | 8.81 | 23.96 | 132 | 16.78 @ 85.53 | 1:41.18 | 28.48 | 136.0 |
Gold row: fastest of the test at 148 mph and quickest to 60 and 100 — though the Magnum again takes the lap by a whisker, 1:37.77 to 1:37.94, as it did in 2007.
Read the three E85 pairs against their petrol twins and the performance case is closed: 0.11 seconds apart to 60 for the Interceptors, 0.04 for the Impalas, and the E85 Tahoe quicker than its own petrol sibling. All three E85 cars also lapped marginally faster. Whatever ethanol cost Michigan, it was not speed.
The braking column has shifted, and not in Dodge’s favour. In 2006 and 2007 every Charger and Magnum stopped in under 134 feet while the Fords and Chevrolets needed 140-plus. This year only the Magnum 3.5 is under 140, at 136.0; the HEMI Charger needs 143.7 and the Police Interceptor 143.6 — a fourteen-foot advantage reduced to almost nothing in two years.
The motorcycles
| Machine | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BMW R1200RT-P | 4.10 | 10.01 | 130.9 | 12.74 @ 108.27 | 5:49.4 | 27.86 | 139.0 |
| Harley-Davidson Road King FLHP | 5.59 | 25.44 | 109.1 | 14.42 @ 92.25 | 6:17.4 | 22.60 | 171.4 |
| Harley-Davidson Electra Glide FLHTP | 5.64 | 26.05 | 106.2 | 14.59 @ 91.16 | 6:19.0 | 22.34 | 173.3 |
Gold row, and it beats its own record. The BMW improved on every measure from its 2007 debut: 4.10 seconds to 60 (from 4.44), 10.01 to 100 (from 10.55), and a quarter mile of 12.74 at 108.27 mph (from 12.85 at 109.5). Those remain the quickest figures recorded by any vehicle in this archive.
The Harleys moved the other way, sharply. Both improved slightly to 60 mph and both got markedly worse everywhere else: 0–100 went from 20.35 and 17.55 seconds in 2007 to 25.44 and 26.05, and braking fell from 24.41 and 24.67 ft/s² to 22.60 and 22.34 — stopping distances lengthening by thirteen and sixteen feet. Their 171-to-173-foot stops are the longest recorded by anything in the 2008 test, including a three-quarter-ton Suburban. The books offer no explanation and the same models were tested both years, so this warrants a look at the specification pages before it is used.
The special-service vehicles
| Vehicle | 0–60 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) | Fade? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ford Explorer 4.6L (2WD) | 8.19 | 104 | 16.39 @ 87.88 | 24.74 | 156.5 | No |
| Ford F-150 Super Crew (2WD) | 8.75 | 97 | 16.75 @ 86.28 | 26.28 | 147.3 | No |
| Ford Expedition 5.4L (2WD) | 8.81 | 105 | 16.70 @ 85.08 | 24.69 | 156.8 | No |
| Chevrolet Suburban ¾-ton 6.0L (4WD) | 9.12 | 95 | 16.92 @ 84.05 | 24.76 | 156.4 | No |
| Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L (4WD) | 9.14 | 97 | 16.96 @ 84.20 | 22.29 | 173.7 | Yes |
The special-service four-wheel-drive Tahoe answered yes to the severe fading question for the third time in four years — 2005, 2007 and now 2008 — while the pursuit-rated PPV built on the same platform showed no fade in any of them. Its 173.7-foot stop this year is the longest of any four-wheeled vehicle in the test. That is no longer a one-off result; it is a pattern, and it is the single clearest argument in this archive for why the police-package designation exists.
Two vehicles appear for the first time: a three-quarter-ton Suburban with the 6.0 V8 and a Ford F-150 Super Crew, which reached 60 in 8.75 seconds — quicker than the previous year’s F-250 by four full seconds.
Ergonomics, communications and fuel
| Vehicle | Ergonomics & communications | City mpg (petrol) | City mpg (E85) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV | 188.63 | 14 | 11 |
| Ford Police Interceptor | 182.27 | 14 | 10 |
| Dodge Charger | 175.25 | 17 (3.5) / 15 (5.7) | — |
| Dodge Magnum | 173.75 | 17 (3.5) / 15 (5.7) | — |
| Chevrolet Impala 9C1 | 167.63 | 18 | 13 |
The E85 column is the year’s real finding. The Police Interceptor loses 29 percent of its city economy on ethanol, the Impala 28 percent and the Tahoe 21 percent — for performance that is, to the hundredth of a second, the same. Any agency reading this table in 2008 was being shown the price of the fuel choice with no compensating figure anywhere else in the book.
One caution on the ergonomics column: every vehicle scored lower than in 2007, most by ten to twenty points — the Tahoe PPV from 208.48 to 188.63, the Interceptor from 191.11 to 182.27, the Impala from 183.80 to 167.63. The vehicles did not change that much. This is a scoring panel marking differently, and it is a reminder that these totals compare vehicles within a year far better than they compare years.
What 2008 settled
Ethanol worked, and it cost a third of the range. Michigan did the useful thing and tested the flexible-fuel cars head to head with their petrol twins rather than in isolation, and the answer came back clean: no meaningful difference in acceleration, top speed, braking or lap time, and a fuel economy penalty of 21 to 29 percent. For a patrol fleet measured in miles per shift, that is the entire argument, and it is on one page.
The other result is a three-year pattern finally clear enough to state. The special-service four-wheel-drive Tahoe faded its brakes in 2005, in 2007 and again here, needing 173.7 feet — while the pursuit-rated PPV on the same platform never faded once. Michigan spent a decade being told that a sport utility is a sport utility. Its own brake sheets say otherwise.