Articles
Articles
Pieces that don’t fit on a test page — findings from the archive, corrections to the record, and conversations with the people who keep these cars running.
The test archive is reference material. It answers questions like what did a 1989 Diplomat run to 100 mph? — and it answers them with a figure and a source, which is all a reference should do.
These are the other kind of piece. Things that only become visible when you read forty years of the same test in order: a number that stopped meaning what it used to, a phrase the whole hobby uses that the department itself says is meaningless, an experiment run once in 1996 and never repeated.
Everything here is built from primary sources, cited on the page, and corrected in public when it turns out to be wrong.
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Research
How police car top speed stopped meaning anything
In 2016 a police Charger needed thirteen miles to reach 150 mph. A year later the same car reached 149 in a mile and a half. Nothing about it had changed — and Michigan’s own data shows exactly what had.
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Research
“Pursuit rated” means nothing, and Michigan says so
The phrase is in every classified ad in the hobby. The department whose tests everyone cites states plainly that there is no sanctioning body, no criteria, and nobody with the authority to award it.
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Research
Sixteen feet: what anti-lock brakes were worth
For the 1996 test Ford submitted a Crown Victoria without ABS, for braking only, alongside its own anti-lock car. Same model, same day, same surface. The difference was about one car length.
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History
Who actually started the Michigan State Police tests
Three men are named in one book’s acknowledgments as having originated the programme — and the 1975 start date everyone repeats is a year out, by the department’s own count, four times over.
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Research
What a police package actually buys
Two Chevrolet Tahoes, same platform, tested the same afternoon. On the first brake stop they were a quarter of a foot apart. Twenty feet later, only one of them was still fine.
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History
The police Mustang leaves, and comes back with no engine
In 1993 two Special Service Package Mustangs ran their last Michigan test, the only cars in the field without anti-lock brakes. Thirty-three years later the badge returned — and stopped shorter than any car ever tested.