Research
“Pursuit rated” has no sanctioning body, and Michigan says so
The phrase appears in almost every police car listing. The department whose tests everyone cites as proof states plainly that there is no sanctioning body behind it, and that neither it nor the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department can award it.
Look at any classified ad for a surviving patrol car and you will find it. Pursuit rated. Sometimes factory pursuit rated, occasionally certified pursuit rated, as though somewhere there is an office that issues the certificate.
There isn’t. And the clearest statement to that effect comes from the organisation the phrase is usually leaning on for credibility — the Michigan State Police, whose annual evaluation has been the benchmark test in this field for half a century.
What the book actually says
In the 2018 evaluation, in a section headed Vehicle Testing History, Pursuit Ratings, and Purchasing Specifications, Michigan addresses the term directly, and the 2019 to 2024 books repeat it. The wording is unusually blunt for a government test report.
The department writes that the term has been called into question because nobody fully understands what it represents. It states that pursuit capable is the more appropriate phrase. It notes that there is no sanctioning body behind the designation and no specific performance criteria attached to it. And then it says the part that ought to end the argument: neither the Michigan State Police nor the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has the authority or the credentials to award the term “pursuit rated” to any vehicle.
The book says the manufacturers supply upcoming vehicles to both organisations for testing, and it dates Michigan’s own testing to the 1950s. Neither, it says, can award the term.
The passage is in every book held here from 2018 to 2024. The 2025 and 2026 books keep the sentences on the term and the sanctioning body but drop the one about authority, and the 2026 book says “pursuit capability”. It is not an offhand remark that slipped into one edition.
The phrase is not a specification that manufacturers meet, and no body awards it.
What does exist, and it is far more interesting
Michigan has no rating to award. What it has is a purchasing specification — the list a vehicle must satisfy before the department will consider buying it. The 2019 book prints the performance criteria attached to it, and they are worth reading because they are so much more specific than the phrase.
| Requirement | Standard |
|---|---|
| 0–60 mph | within 9.0 seconds |
| 0–80 mph | within 14.9 seconds |
| 0–100 mph | within 24.6 seconds |
| Reach 110 mph | within 4,838 feet |
| Reach 120 mph | within 8,985 feet |
| Braking | average 25.79 ft/s² across twenty 60-to-0 stops |
| Durability | complete all 32 laps without major component failure |
Notice what is not on that list: a top speed figure as such, though reaching 120 mph within 8,985 feet means a vehicle must be able to reach 120. The standard asks how quickly a vehicle reaches a useful speed, measured in feet of road.
Michigan is careful about what meeting this list means. It does not certify a vehicle as pursuit rated. It justifies that the vehicle can do the job the MSP requires. Another agency, in another state, with different roads and different work, is entitled to a different list.
The least impressive requirement turned out to be the one that mattered
Read that table again and the last line looks like housekeeping. Complete all 32 laps without major component failure. Next to a 24.6-second run to 100 mph it sounds like a formality.
In the very same book, both Tahoes had trouble with exactly that line, though the book does not say that either failed it.
During the September 2018 dynamics session, in temperatures climbing from 70°F in the morning to 88°F by mid-afternoon, both Chevrolet Tahoes went into partial power or protect mode on lap seven or eight of every run, for every driver. General Motors engineers investigated and believed the cause was malfunctioning thermal bypass valves, which control the flow of transmission fluid through the oil cooler. The parts were replaced and both vehicles retested in October, in 46°F — where the rear-drive car still lost power on the last lap of its third and fourth runs.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department then tested both Tahoes on 25 October, in 84°F. The four-wheel-drive car overheated again. GM declined further testing until it had found the root cause. The four-wheel-drive Tahoe was redeveloped and, on 24 January 2019, completed all 32 laps of LASD’s dynamic course and its city pursuit course — and Michigan, with winter conditions at Grattan, accepted that result as meeting its purchasing requirements. The same page adds that “GM has no known incidents” of the problem as a result of insufficient transmission cooling capacity.
None of that appears in a 0–60 time. None of it appears in a top speed. It appears only in the plainest line on the list, and it is precisely the kind of problem that matters to somebody driving the thing on a hot afternoon.
The distinction that does exist: package, not rating
If “pursuit rated” has nothing behind it, what should a buyer actually look for? The answer is a distinction the Michigan books drew from the 1990s into the 2000s: the difference between a police package vehicle, engineered for the full range of patrol work including pursuit, and a special service vehicle, which the manufacturers said was “not suitable for high speed, pursuit or emergency driving” (2002 book).
That distinction is real, it is a manufacturer’s own designation, and the archive shows exactly what it buys. The clearest demonstration runs across four years and two versions of the same truck.
Michigan’s brake test asks one pass-or-fail question: is there evidence of severe fading? Almost everything answers no. The special-service four-wheel-drive Tahoe answered yes in 2005, 2007 and 2008 — while the police-package PPV built on the same platform answered no in each of those years.
2005 shows it cleanly. Across their first six stops the two Tahoes averaged within a quarter of a foot of each other: 144.65 feet for the special-service car and 144.87 for the police package car. After a four-minute heat soak, the police package car’s six stops averaged 145.15 feet. The special-service car’s averaged 164.62 feet. Twenty feet of difference that the first phase does not show, and exactly what the package designation is for.
“Pursuit rated” tells you what a seller wants you to think. “Police package” tells you what the manufacturer built the vehicle for — and the brake sheets tell you how it did.
What to do with this
If you are buying: ignore the phrase entirely. Ask for the package code instead — 9C1, P71, or whatever the manufacturer used that year — and check it against the build sheet or the VIN. A package code is a fact that can be verified. A rating is not. Our guide to identifying a genuine police package car covers how, and the option codes reference lists the codes themselves.
If you are writing or selling: “police package” is accurate, checkable and means something. “Pursuit rated” has no body behind it, and now that the department everyone cites has said so in print in every book since 2018, using it is a choice rather than an oversight.
And if someone tells you a car is pursuit rated because it passed the Michigan tests: the Michigan tests do not issue ratings. They publish numbers. Those numbers are all in the archive, year by year, and they are considerably more useful than any phrase could be.