The vehicle

Chevrolet Camaro B4C

Twenty-three entries across twelve Michigan tests. The fastest police vehicle ever recorded in this archive — and almost nobody counts it.

Every test

Both transmissions are shown, because they differ enough to matter. All entries are in every Camaro entry.

Which of these figures are real

This matters more here than on any other vehicle page, because the Camaro’s top speeds repeat almost exactly across several years — 159 in 1996, 159 in 1999, 159 in 2001, 159 in 2002 — and repetition like that can point to an electronic limit rather than a measurement.

Michigan marks limited figures with a footnote. Reading the sources line by line gives this:

160 mph in 2000 carries no limiter footnote, and neither do the 159s of 1996 and 1999. For 2000 that is weaker evidence than it looks: the 2000 bulletin’s tables mark no limiter for any vehicle, not even the Police Interceptor, which its text says had one. The 2001 and 2002 figures do carry a mark: a limiter was fitted, so they may be settings rather than capabilities.

One thing to be careful of: the 2000 bulletin does mention a 130-mph limiter that year — but that passage is about Ford’s Police Interceptor (the Crown Victoria), not the Camaro. It is an easy misreading and it would change the answer, so it is worth naming.

Automatic against manual

Michigan tested both, and the result is not what you would expect from the era.

Across the eleven tests that ran both, the automatic was faster on top speed in six, the manual in two (1994 and 1997), and three were ties. In 1991 and 1992 the manual car had a 5.0 rather than the automatic’s 5.7, so those years compare engines as well as gearboxes. Two of those results are not real contests: in 1993 one Camaro’s 147.1 is its “highest speed recorded before test equipment failure” (the six-speed’s, as the bulletin’s column headings show), and in 1998 both cars stopped at the 150 mph the drivers were told not to exceed. 2001’s tie is two limited figures. The manual was quicker to sixty in six of the eleven. Bold marks the better figure in each pair.

What it was for

The 1992 book and the 1997 and 1998 bulletins class the Camaro as a special service package car; from the 2000 bulletin to the 2002 book it is in the police category, and the 2002 book calls it the “pursuit Camaro”. The 2000 bulletin says Chevrolet offered it “for highway and traffic enforcement use”. It was a two-door car with little room for a cage or a full equipment load — what a police package covers is a separate question.

Comparing it with a Crown Victoria is only half fair. The Camaro did one job. The Interceptor did all of them, at 128 to 130 mph, for thirteen consecutive years.

Near the bottom in all twelve years it was scored

Michigan scored the Camaro’s ergonomics and communications in twelve separate evaluations. It was last of six models in 1991, at 146.03, and last of seven in 1994, at 209.26; and it was last in the field four years running — 1997 at 157.67, 1998 at 161.17, 1999 at 155.43 and 2000 at 159.35.

In the other six it was sixth of eight in 1992 and in 1993, sixth of seven in 1995, seventh of eight in 1996, sixth of seven in 2001 and thirteenth of fourteen in 2002 (fifth of six among the vehicles in the police category that year). In a full field it never finished better than sixth. What scored below it was the Lumina and a Mustang in 1992 and 1993, the Lumina in 1995, a Geo Tracker in 1996, and an AM General Hummer in 2001 and 2002.

The vehicle at the top in 1997, 1998 and 1999 was the Chevrolet Tahoe — 218.16, 238.89 and 222.07. The quickest car in each of those three tests was also the worst place in the book to spend a shift, and by 2024 the books held here had Tahoes and no police sedan at all.

Scores are not comparable across 2017, when the communications section was regraded on a much larger range. All the figures above predate that change.

Recognising one: what the books record

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

The books call it a Camaro. Their vehicle description pages give Chevrolet’s sales code as 1FP87: on both cars in the 1992, 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2001 books, and on the automatic, the only Camaro tested that year, in the 2002 book. B4C, the name collectors use and the one in this page’s title, is not printed in any of the nine books and bulletins held here from 1993 to 2004 whose text can be searched; in the documents held here it appears in the Police magazine buyer’s guide filed with the 1992 book, which also labels a Lumina B4C. From the 1994 book they list P245/50ZR16 tyres and a wheelbase of 101.1 inches, and the 1999, 2001 and 2002 books give a 105-amp alternator.

What the books cannot tell you is whether a particular car was built as one. The method is on how to identify a genuine police package car: the build documents settle it, and nothing else does.

Errors to avoid

• “A 140-amp alternator is one of the things to look for.” No Michigan book held here records one on the Camaro: the 1999, 2001 and 2002 books give 105 amps. The corrections page has the detail.
• “Its 160 mph is known to be a limiter setting.” Nothing in the books says so. The 2000 figure carries no limiter mark, though that bulletin marks none for any vehicle; the 2001 and 2002 figures do. Which of these figures are real, above, goes through each year.
• “The 2000 bulletin says the Camaro had a 130-mph limiter.” That passage is about Ford’s Police Interceptor, the Crown Victoria.
• “The 1969 Polara, at 147 mph, was the fastest police car.” Michigan recorded the Camaro above 150 mph in ten tests, and at 160 in 2000.
• “It was never in Michigan’s police field.” The 1992 book and the 1997 and 1998 bulletins class it as a special service package car, but the books from 2000 put it in the police category, and the 2002 book calls it the “pursuit Camaro”.

Where it sits in the record

The braking is worth noting. In every test from 1991 to 1995 a Camaro had the best braking in the field: 145.4 feet at its average rate in 1991, a computed 144.8 in 1992 and 127.6 in 1993, 130.2 in 1994 (the 1991, 1993 and 1994 bulletins’ own figures) and 131.0 in 1995. After that the 160 mph car never stopped in less than 134.4 — a figure the 1996 Caprice and Crown Victoria and the 1998 and 2000 Volvo sedans all beat. The Caprice managed 125.8 in 2012 under the twenty-stop procedure, which is not directly comparable.