Michigan test archive

2020 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test

A Yamaha breaks an eight-year-old record, two BMWs lift their rear wheels up to two and a half feet under braking, and Dodge brings next year’s cars.

The police category

See the original pages in the 2020 book: lap times and acceleration

Every car and truck on this page had a speed limiter fitted, unless the book notes otherwise. The report states it for the whole field in its General Information section, printed page 2: “All vehicles listed in this report were equipped with electronic speed limiters unless otherwise noted, or with the exception of certain motorcycles.”

The caveat matters. By the 2015 book (the 2013 book has the unconditional wording; 2014 is not held) the sentence is no longer unconditional: it excepts “certain motorcycles”, so on this page the blanket statement covers the cars, and not necessarily the motorcycles. Which motorcycles, Michigan does not say. The 2021 book drops the motorcycle clause again. The car top-speed method in this book runs each car “until it reaches the manufacturer electronically limited top speed” (printed p.41), so the Chargers’ extra mile an hour may be a limiter setting.

The book prints the MSP’s purchasing criteria (printed p.4): 60 mph within 9.0 seconds, 80 within 14.9, 100 within 24.6; 110 mph within 0.92 mile and 120 mph within 1.70 miles; 25.79 ft/s² over twenty stops; and all 32 Grattan laps without major component failure. By its own figures four vehicles missed at least one: the Responder Hybrid sedan (9.06, 15.45 and 27.91 seconds, and 117 mph, so it never reached 120), the F-150 (105 mph, so never 110 or 120) and the two Durangos (117 and 118 mph). The book names none of them as out, and says meeting the criteria does not certify a vehicle as pursuit rated. Every vehicle cleared the braking minimum; the lowest rate is the F-150’s 26.54.

Gold row: quickest car or truck to 60 and to 100 for the second consecutive year, from a sport utility. The AWD HEMI Charger took the best lap average, 1:36.31, two tenths ahead of it.

The hybrid Utility keeps quietly making its case. It reached 100 mph in 17.62 seconds and lapped in 1:39.34 — quicker than the petrol 3.3-litre version of the same vehicle — while returning 23 mpg city against the 3.3’s 17. It also stopped shorter, 130.1 feet against 131.5.

Braking divides the field into two clean groups. Every Dodge and every Ford Utility sits between 127.2 and 131.5 feet. The two Tahoes and the F-150 need 142.5, 144.9 and 145.9 — an eleven-foot gap to the rest of the field, and the third consecutive year the Tahoes have been among the longest-stopping cars and trucks in the test — though the F-150 needs more still.

The motorcycles

Gold row: two archive records and the motorcycle top speed in one machine. 3.67 seconds to 60 mph and 147 mph both improve on the Yamaha’s own 2019 figures, and 8.19 seconds to 100 mph finally beats the 2012 Kawasaki’s 8.29 — a mark that had survived eight years and every motorcycle Michigan tested in between. The Yamaha needed three miles to find its top speed; the BMW, two and a quarter, and it had the better lap average (the quickest single lap printed was the Yamaha’s 1:35.57).

§ The braking figures for the two GS-P machines carry the same warning as in 2019, and a larger number. The rear tyre lost contact with the road on the majority of brake applications and, in general, lifted twenty-four to thirty inches, forcing the rider to modulate braking pressure rather than make a true panic stop, and on several occasions to release front brake pressure because the motorcycle was no longer stable. The book prints their figures with that warning, so read them with it in mind.

Ergonomics and communications

Gold row: the Durango led both columns again; the hybrid sedan scored lowest on both.

See the original pages in the 2020 book: ergonomics

Fuel economy

The hybrid Utility’s 23 mpg city and 24 combined is the best figure any petrol or hybrid sport utility has recorded in this archive, matched by the hybrid in every book from 2021 to 2025 — and it belongs to a vehicle that lapped Grattan quicker than its petrol equivalent and ran 136 mph. The economy argument and the performance argument had finally stopped pointing in opposite directions.

See the original page in the 2020 book: fuel economy