Michigan test archive
Police car tests of the 2010s
The Panther dies and the Utility takes over. 10 Michigan State Police vehicle tests, transcribed from the original reports.
The Caprice comes back in 2011 after fifteen years and beats everything. Then 2012 ends the Panther era: no Crown Victoria, six new Fords in its place, and a new twenty-stop brake procedure, under which three cars stopped inside 127 feet in a single test.
What follows is the quiet part. A turbocharged Explorer arrives in 2014 and laps quicker than five of the saloons it is competing against. By 2019 the fastest and quickest vehicle on four wheels is a sport utility, and Michigan has written in its own book that “pursuit rated” means nothing.
The tests
| Model year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2010 | The same eight cars, tested again — the archive’s cleanest year-on-year repeat |
| 2011 | The Caprice returns after fifteen years and beats everything in the test |
| 2012 | The Panther era ends; Ford brings six cars, and the brake test doubles in length |
| 2013 | E85 vanishes entirely, and a turbocharged Ford takes the fastest lap of the year |
| 2014 | Mid-year 2014.5 cars tested beside their own earlier versions; a 155-mph Caprice |
| 2015 | A retest printed in red, and a four-wheel-drive Tahoe that skipped the road course |
| 2016 | A four-cylinder police sedan, the first electric motorcycle, and a new braking record |
| 2017 | The Impala disappears — and Michigan’s own data exposes the speed limiters |
| 2018 | The first hybrid police sedan at 40 mpg, and the first pickup in the police category |
| 2019 | A 150-mph sport utility, two overheating Tahoes, and “pursuit rated” disowned in print |
About these tests. Michigan has evaluated patrol vehicles every
autumn since 1976 and published the results ever since. The scoring converts
performance into a dollar figure that is added to each manufacturer’s bid, which
is why the numbers are trustworthy — the department has to buy the car it
publishes figures about. The full explanation, and the complete list of years, is
on the archive index. See
how this site is researched and
corrections.