The vehicle

Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor

Eighty-three entries across thirty-six Michigan tests: fifty-eight for the Panther from 1983 to 2011 and twenty-five for the Taurus-based sedan from 2012 to 2018. The Panther car was in every test from 1983 to 2011, and never ran faster than 135 mph.

Every test

The principal car each year. Alternative axles, natural-gas and E85 variants are in the full table. Gold-edged rows are the Taurus-based car.

Thirteen years without getting faster

Read the top speed column between 1999 and 2011 and it barely moves:

That is not a car being developed. It is a car being kept in production.

It was rarely the performance leader in these books; the 2005 test, with no Charger and no Caprice in the field, is the one where it led on acceleration, top speed and the road course. The Caprice it outlived ran 139 mph in 1996, and a police Camaro was doing 160 while the Interceptor sat at 129.

The 2012 break

Then the name moves to a different car entirely, and the numbers jump in a way they had not done in twenty years.

Three seconds quicker to sixty and nineteen miles an hour faster, in one model year. The Panther had been in the books since 1983.

The Taurus-based car peaked at 150 mph in 2013 and again in 2016, and left the programme after 2018. By 2024 Michigan tested no police sedan of any kind.

Three entries worth knowing about

1992, the first 4.6. The 1992 book is the first held here with the 4.6-litre Crown Victoria, and the car that ran the whole test had conventional brakes: four-wheel discs, no anti-lock, 162.6 feet computed from 60 mph. A second Crown Victoria with ABS was tested for braking only and stopped in a computed 146.6 feet, and that is the figure the book scored for Ford. The Caprice still led the bid score, 4.33 against 4.93.

1996, 149.5 feet to stop, no anti-lock brakes. That car was not in the test to compete, and it has no top speed or acceleration figures at all. The book says only that it “was submitted for brake testing only”; it was braked at the same site on the same day as Ford’s own ABS car. The difference was sixteen feet — that story is here.

The natural-gas cars. Michigan tested CNG and NGV Crown Victorias through the late 1990s and into 2001. They ran 104 to 123 mph and were slower to sixty than anything else Ford brought. They appear in the full table rather than above, which follows the petrol cars.

Recognising one: what the books record

A surviving car can be checked against what Ford gave Michigan to test. The table is taken from the books’ own vehicle description pages. It shows what the police car had in those years, not what any particular car left the factory with.

Two lines in that record matter most to anyone checking a car. The name: the books call the principal car a Crown Victoria up to the 1998 bulletin and a Police Interceptor from the 1999 book, though the 2001 natural-gas car and the 2002 long-wheelbase car are still listed as Crown Victorias. The code: the 1990 and 1992 books print Ford’s sales code for the Crown Victoria as P-72, and the 1994 book prints P-71; every later book held here that prints a vehicle description gives P71, the 2001 natural-gas car included. The 2002 book’s long-wheelbase Crown Victoria carries P70. Every book from 1996 that prints a vehicle description lists the same four-speed automatic, the 4R70W, and the 2005, 2006 and 2009 books give a 200-amp alternator.

What the books cannot tell you is whether a particular car was built as one. Parts move between cars, and the badge, the paint and the equipment can all be added. The method is on how to identify a genuine police package car: the build documents settle it, and nothing else does.

Errors to avoid

• “It has been the Police Interceptor since 1992.” In the books held here the name starts with the 1999 book; the P-71 code is printed from the 1994 book, and the 1992 book gives the first 4.6 car P-72. At least one account outside the books dates the name to 1992, and I have not found a document that confirms it. The Police Interceptor name has the detail.
• “About 129 mph was what it could do.” The books mark a speed limiter against the car in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2002 (the 1994 preface lists it among the cars whose limiters control “either the maximum top speeds or engine RPMs”), the 2000 bulletin says the Police Interceptor “features a 130-mph speed limiter”, and from the 2003 bulletin Michigan states that all vehicles have one. A limiter mark says a limiter was fitted, so the figure may be the limiter’s rather than the most the car could do. The corrections page explains.
• “The 2000 limiter note is about the Camaro.” It is about the Police Interceptor. Read the other way, it would wrongly cast doubt on the Camaro’s 160 mph; the Camaro page sets out what is and is not marked.
• “The 2012 Police Interceptor sedan is the last Crown Victoria.” It is a different car, Taurus-based and front- or all-wheel drive. The two are related by badge only.

Where it sits in the record

Twelve of the 84 entries, from 1994 to 2002, carry the source’s own limiter mark (six of them are the principal cars in the table above, for 1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2002; in 1994 the mark is the preface’s list of cars with electronic limiters, from 1996 a footnote), meaning a limiter was fitted, so the figure may report the limiter rather than what the car could do — why that matters.