Michigan test archive
2014 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test
Michigan tests the same cars twice — before and after their mid-year updates — and the fastest lap in the archive goes to an all-wheel-drive Dodge.
Fifteen vehicles and seven motorcycles, and the entry list has a feature it has never had before: “2014.5” mid-year models tested alongside their own earlier versions. Michigan ran three Chargers and three Fords in early-year form and then ran their updated equivalents in the same session, which makes this the only year in the archive where a manufacturer’s running changes are measured head to head on the same day.
Two of those mid-year cars are firsts. The 2014.5 Dodge Charger AWD with the 5.7 HEMI is the first all-wheel-drive Charger in these tests, and it recorded a lap of 1:34.75 — the second-quickest car lap in this archive, four tenths behind the 2012 Charger’s 1:34.39. The 2014.5 Ford Police Interceptor Utility EcoBoost is the first turbocharged version of the Explorer-based patrol vehicle: 6.28 seconds to 60, 15.51 to 100, and a 1:37.70 lap that puts it ahead of five sedans on this page. That combination — sport utility body, turbocharged V6, sedan pace — is what American policing spent the following decade buying.
The outright numbers still belonged to Chevrolet. The Caprice 6.0 ran 155 mph, a mile an hour up on its own 2012 and 2013 figures. The same car would run 156 on retest the following year, which is the fastest speed any police sedan reaches in this archive. And the quickest single acceleration figure went to Ford: the 2014.5 EcoBoost sedan reached 60 in 5.66 seconds and crossed the quarter mile at 102.27 mph.
The police category
| Vehicle | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014.5 Dodge Charger AWD 5.7L (3.06) | 6.04 | 14.70 | 148 | 14.60 @ 99.58 | 1:34.75 | 30.25 | 128.0 |
| Chevrolet Caprice 6.0L | 6.01 | 14.35 | 155 | 14.52 @ 100.68 | 1:34.98 | 30.35 | 127.6 |
| 2014.5 Ford PI Sedan EcoBoost AWD 3.5L | 5.66 | 13.50 | 132 | 14.13 @ 102.27 | 1:35.05 | 28.99 | 133.6 |
| Ford PI Sedan EcoBoost AWD 3.5L | 5.71 | 13.72 | 149 | 14.20 @ 101.57 | 1:35.19 | 28.51 | 135.8 |
| 2014.5 Dodge Charger 5.7L (2.65) | 6.12 | 14.57 | 150 | 14.53 @ 99.88 | 1:35.80 | 30.62 | 126.5 |
| Dodge Charger 5.7L (2.65) | 6.13 | 14.56 | 152 | 14.53 @ 99.85 | 1:36.00 | 30.43 | 127.2 |
| Chevrolet Caprice 3.6L | 7.45 | 18.31 | 148 | 15.71 @ 92.17 | 1:36.64 | 30.53 | 126.8 |
| 2014.5 Dodge Charger 3.6L (2.65) § | 8.32 | 21.29 | 139 | 16.38 @ 90.31 | 1:37.28 | 30.04 | 128.9 |
| Ford PI Sedan AWD 3.7L | 7.48 | 18.64 | 132 | 15.72 @ 92.28 | 1:37.41 | 28.83 | 134.3 |
| Dodge Charger 3.6L (3.07) | 7.85 | 19.95 | 141 | 16.00 @ 89.91 | 1:37.56 | 30.37 | 127.5 |
| 2014.5 Ford PI Utility EcoBoost AWD 3.5L | 6.28 | 15.51 | 131 | 14.74 @ 97.50 | 1:37.70 | 28.71 | 134.9 |
| Ford PI Sedan FWD 3.5L | 8.01 | 20.38 | 131 | 16.22 @ 90.64 | 1:38.75 | 28.89 | 134.0 |
| Chevrolet Impala 3.6L | 7.67 | 19.40 | 149 | 15.98 @ 90.70 | 1:40.10 | 28.78 | 134.5 |
| Ford PI Utility AWD 3.7L | 8.02 | 21.00 | 131 | 16.10 @ 89.25 | 1:40.15 | 28.85 | 134.2 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L | 8.22 | 21.95 | 139 | 16.47 @ 87.68 | 1:42.35 | 29.07 | 133.2 |
Gold row: 1:34.75, the quickest lap of this test and the second-quickest by a car in the archive. All-wheel drive did what all-wheel drive does — the AWD HEMI is fractionally slower than its rear-drive sibling to 60 mph and four miles an hour slower on top, and it is a full second and a quarter faster around a two-mile road course.
§ The book contradicts itself on the mid-year V6 Charger’s axle. Its preface calls it a 3.07; the acceleration summary, its own test sheet, the dynamics table, the brake sheet and the fuel table all call it a 2.65. This page follows the five tables against the one preface line.
The mid-year comparisons are the most interesting thing here because they are so small. The 2014.5 HEMI Charger against the earlier car: 0.01 seconds apart to 60, two miles an hour apart on top, two tenths apart on the lap. The 2014.5 EcoBoost against the earlier EcoBoost: 0.05 seconds to 60, 0.14 on the lap — but seventeen miles an hour apart on top speed, 132 against 149. That is not a running change to an engine; that is a change to a speed limiter, and it is the single largest difference between any two versions of the same car on this page.
Note also the split between manufacturers on braking. Every Dodge and every Chevrolet sits at 29.07 ft/s² or better; every Ford sits at 28.99 or worse. The gap is not large in feet — about seven — but it is perfectly clean, with no overlap between the two groups at all.
Each manufacturer chose its own electronics
For the 2014 dynamics testing Michigan let every manufacturer decide how its vehicles’ traction and stability control would be set at Grattan. The choices were not the same, and the book lists them: Ford offers no way to alter those controls, so its cars ran fully active. Dodge elected to run in a partial stability mode, which also deactivates traction control. Chevrolet deactivated traction control on the Tahoe but left stability control fully on, ran the Impala in partial stability with traction off, ran the Caprice the same way, and additionally engaged the Caprice’s Sport transmission mode, which changes shift points to aid power-train braking.
That matters for reading the lap column. The quickest time on this page was set by a car whose manufacturer was allowed to switch part of its electronics off, and the slowest sedans belong to the manufacturer that could not.
The motorcycles
| Machine | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | 110 mph in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BMW R 1200 RT-P | 4.37 | 10.79 | 130 | 0.25 mi |
| Moto Guzzi Norge 1200 ABS | 4.55 | 11.78 | 129 | — |
| BMW F800 GT-P | 4.99 | 12.10 | 139 | 0.33 mi |
| Victory Commander | 5.31 | 15.99 | 115 | — |
| Moto Guzzi California 1400 Touring ABS | 5.51 | 15.45 | 122 | — |
| Harley-Davidson Road King FLHP | 5.57 | 18.62 | 110 | 9.66 mi |
| Harley-Davidson Electra Glide FLHTP | 5.53 | 19.60 | 107 | — |
Two Moto Guzzis appear for the first time in this archive, and the Norge 1200 is genuinely quick — 4.55 seconds to 60, second only to the BMW, and 129 mph. The oddity of the group is the BMW F800 GT-P: an 800cc parallel twin that is six tenths slower to 60 than its 1200cc stablemate and then runs 139 mph, nine miles an hour faster than it, and reaches 110 in a third of a mile. It is the fastest motorcycle top speed in the archive to this point; the 2015 BMW R1200 RTP runs 141.
Ergonomics, communications and fuel
| Vehicle | Ergonomics & communications | City mpg |
|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Tahoe | 226.12 | 15 |
| Dodge Charger | 210.36 | 18 (3.6) / 15 (5.7) |
| Ford Police Interceptor Utility | 208.82 | 16 (3.7) / 15 (EcoBoost) |
| Chevrolet Caprice | 204.62 | 18 (3.6) / 15 (6.0) |
| Chevrolet Impala | 197.93 | 17 |
| Ford Police Interceptor sedan | 194.70 | 18 (FWD) / 18 (AWD 3.7) / 16 (EcoBoost) |
The communications section has recovered completely from its 2012 collapse and then some: every vehicle scored between 7.33 and 8.82 on dashboard, trunk and engine-compartment access, the best spread in years. That makes the 2012 figures look more clearly like a scoring artefact than ever.
The Ford sedan finishes last again, and the reason is unchanged from 2013: 5.10 for rear-seat legroom and 4.60 for rear-seat entry and exit. The Utility version of the same car scores 6.90 and 7.30 on those two lines and finishes fourteen points higher overall. Given that both were on sale side by side, that gap is a good part of why American fleets went the way they did.
What 2014 settled
The shape of the next decade is visible on this page, and it is not a sedan. A turbocharged Explorer reached 60 mph in 6.28 seconds and lapped Grattan quicker than five of the saloons it was competing against — including two Chevrolets and every naturally aspirated Ford. It was not the fastest thing in the test and it never needed to be. It was quick enough, it had a back seat people could get into, and it scored fourteen points higher on ergonomics than the sedan built on the same platform.
The outright records went elsewhere and went out in style: a 155 mph Caprice, the fastest police sedan this archive had measured to that point — the same car ran 156 on retest in 2015 — and an all-wheel-drive HEMI Charger lapping in 1:34.75, within four tenths of the quickest car lap in the archive. Both of those cars were within a few years of the end.