The programme
How the Michigan police vehicle test works
What the Michigan State Police actually measure, how they measure it, and the three changes that make most published police car records wrong.
Every autumn the Michigan police vehicle test takes the coming year’s patrol cars to a proving ground and measures them. It is run by the Michigan State Police Precision Driving Unit. The results go into a book, and departments across the United States buy from it.
This site holds 37 of those books, transcribed. Before quoting any figure from them — from here or anywhere else — it is worth knowing what was actually measured, and when the measuring changed.
What gets measured
| Measure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Acceleration | 0–60, 0–100 and the quarter mile, each the average of four runs rather than a best |
| Top speed | The highest speed reached on the track. Since 1995 this is frequently a governed maximum rather than a capability — how that happened |
| Braking | Repeated 60–0 impending-skid stops, taken one after another so the brakes get hotter. The scored figure is the average deceleration rate; the distance is computed from it |
| Dynamics | Timed laps of a road course. The score is an average of the fastest laps across several drivers, not a single hot lap |
| Ergonomics and communications | Twenty-nine attributes graded by officers who sit in the vehicle and work in it — reach, visibility, where the equipment goes |
| Fuel economy | Recorded in some years, absent in others |
The programme is a purchasing exercise, not a magazine test. Every score feeds a weighted total, and that total adjusts each manufacturer’s bid by a fixed amount per point. A vehicle that scores well can lose on price, and a vehicle that fails a minimum standard cannot be bid at all.
The three things that break comparison
These are the reason most published police car records are not comparing what they think they are.
| Year | What changed | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Braking went from twelve measured 60–0 stops to twenty, in two phases of ten separated by a cool-down lap | A post-2014 stopping distance was achieved under a harder test. Comparing it directly with a pre-2014 figure flatters the older one |
| 2001 | The road course moved to Grattan Raceway after a quarter of a century at Michigan International Speedway | A pre-2001 lap is not a faster lap. It is a lap of a different circuit |
| 1995–2003 | Electronic speed limiters spread from one vehicle to the entire field | A top speed may record what a manufacturer decided rather than what the vehicle could do — the full sequence is here |
Acceleration and top speed have also been recorded at more than one proving ground over the years — Chrysler’s for most of the programme’s history, and later FCA’s. Where a year page knows the venue, it says so.
Any police car record that spans 2012 without saying so is comparing twelve stops with twenty. Any lap record that spans 2001 is comparing two different circuits.
What the books do not record
Worth knowing before you go looking for it.
Horsepower. Engines are listed by code and displacement. Output is a manufacturer figure and is not in these books.
Which standard a disqualified vehicle missed. Sometimes stated, often not. Where it is not, this archive does not guess.
What departments actually bought. Michigan publishes what it tested and what it would pay. Purchasing decisions by other agencies are not in scope.
Anything about the vehicle in service. Durability, running cost and what breaks first are the things a fleet manager cares about most, and the test measures none of them. That is not a criticism — it is a two-day evaluation, not a hundred thousand miles.
What is in this archive
| Page | |
|---|---|
| Test results | Every vehicle ever tested, in one sortable and filterable table |
| Records | Fastest, quickest and shortest — split either side of the changes above |
| What gets tested | The field year by year, counted by body type. Six sedans in 1978, none in 2026 |
| Disqualified | The vehicles thrown out for failing a minimum standard |
| Speed limiters | When the top speed stopped being a measurement |
| Vehicles and manufacturers | The same data cut by subject |
| The year pages | Each book transcribed in full, with its own conditions and caveats |
Where the books come from, and which are missing
The published reports are federal and state documents. This archive holds 37 of them, from 1978 to 2026.
Missing: 1979, 1984–86, 1990–92, 1994 and 2021–24. Those books were produced and have not been located. Their absence is marked on every page rather than passed over, because a record set in a missing year would not appear here.
Before 1978 the record is thinner still. Michigan’s comparative programme began in 1976, its first published report covers model year 1979, and the department has indicated it does not hold complete reports from the 1970s — what survives of that decade is here.
If you hold one of the missing books, or know where one is, please get in touch. A single 1994 or 2022 report would close a gap this archive currently has to hedge.