The programme
When the top speed stopped being a measurement
One limited vehicle in 1995. Every vehicle in the test by 2003. The paper trail is in Michigan’s own footnotes.
A top speed in these books looks like a measurement of a car. For a large part of the programme’s history it is not. It is a number a manufacturer chose, and the engine management enforced.
Michigan recorded that honestly, and the record of it is buried in footnote markers and small print. Assembled in one place, it dates the change precisely.
How fast it happened
| Year | Limited | Share | Which, and at what |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | 5 of 11 | 45% | Ford Crown Victoria 135, Chevrolet Caprice 4.3L 120, Jeep Cherokee 112, Ford Crown Victoria (CNG) 107, and 1 more |
| 1999 | 5 of 10 | 50% | Ford Police Interceptor 129, Chevrolet Lumina 124, Jeep Cherokee 111, Jeep Cherokee 111, and 1 more |
| 2001 | 8 of 8 | 100% | Chevrolet Camaro (6-speed) 159, Chevrolet Camaro (automatic) 159, Ford Police Interceptor 129, Chevrolet Impala 124, and 4 more |
| 2002 | 14 of 14 | 100% | Chevrolet Camaro (automatic) 159, Dodge Intrepid 135, Ford Police Interceptor (2002) 129, Ford Police Interceptor (2003) 127, and 10 more |
And then the footnote disappears, because it became unnecessary
This is the part that matters, and it is easy to read the wrong way.
After 2002 the per-vehicle markers stop. That is not manufacturers abandoning limiters. It is the opposite. From 2003 the books stop marking individual vehicles and state it once, in the conditions:
All vehicles were equipped with electronic speed limiters.
The same sentence appears in 2004 and 2005, the last adding that the top-speed column therefore records governed maxima rather than capability. A footnote is only worth printing when it distinguishes some vehicles from others. Once everything is limited, it stops being a footnote and becomes a condition of the test.
The whole sequence
| Year | How it is recorded |
|---|---|
| 1995 | First mention. One vehicle in the test carried a factory limiter |
| 1996 | Five of eleven marked. The Crown Victoria at 135, the 4.3 Caprice at 120 — while the 5.7 Caprice’s 139 is not marked. One table, two kinds of number |
| 1997 | No limiter footnote at all |
| 1998 | A lower-case b attached to ten of the fifteen top speeds. The book says plainly that the figure shown is a governed maximum rather than a measured capability |
| 1999 | Five of ten |
| 2000 | Ford fits a 130-mph limiter as standard. The Crown Victoria records 129 |
| 2001 | Every vehicle with a top speed is marked |
| 2002 | Every vehicle again — fourteen of them |
| 2003 | The markers stop. The conditions state it once: all vehicles were equipped with electronic speed limiters |
| 2004–2005 | The same sentence. 2005 adds that the column therefore records governed maxima rather than capability |
Seven years, and one number stops meaning what it used to
From one vehicle in 1995 to the entire field in 2003. Nothing announced it and no rule required it — manufacturers simply decided, one at a time, what their police vehicles would be allowed to do, and Michigan wrote down the decision because that was what there was to measure.
It is why a Crown Victoria ran 128 to 130 mph in every test from 1999 to 2011 without ever getting faster. It was not being developed. It was being held.
What it does to the records
Every top speed on this site from 1995 onward has to be read with this in mind, and the archive marks them where the source does.
The Camaro’s 160 mph in 2000 carries no footnote, and neither do its 159s of 1996 and 1999 — so the fastest figure in this archive is a measurement. Its 2001 and 2002 figures are footnoted, and are settings.
The Charger is the harder case. No Charger entry carries Michigan’s footnote, yet in 2016 one needed 13.28 miles to reach 150 mph where the following year’s car needed 1.45. That looks exactly like a limiter, and this site still calls it evidence rather than documentation, because the book does not say so.