Corrections: videos and history

Corrected — the Camaro that came before

The 1979 CHP Camaro had a 350, and the failure was not a camshaft

Both halves are wrong. The cars ran the LM1 350, and the failure was in the bottom end rather than the camshaft. The same sentence appears in the Camaro B4C video, and the full correction is set out under that heading below.

Reported by Edward Villalpando, who watched this video and wrote in.

Corrected — acceleration

The famous 6.3-second figure is zero to fifty, not zero to sixty

Ford’s own 1982 advertisement, the one carrying the “chases Porsches for a living” line, states in print that the car “accelerates from zero to 50 in 6.3 seconds.” Zero to fifty. Somewhere in the decades since, the fifty became a sixty, and the error is now repeated almost everywhere, including here. Michigan State Police testing settles it independently: 7.64 seconds to sixty with the five-speed, 8.16 with the automatic. The Ferrari comparison was wrong and has been removed.

Sources: Ford Motor Company advertisement, 1982, supplied by Michael S. Champion, a retired California Highway Patrol officer who drove these cars from 1982 to 1993. Michigan State Police, 1987 evaluation.

Corrected — top speed

139.1 mph, not 137

Michigan recorded 139.1 mph for the automatic and 139.6 for the five-speed in 1987. Worth noting that the same specification recorded 135.0 in 1988 and 137.2 in 1989, so any single figure is a measurement rather than a property of the car.

Source: Michigan State Police evaluations, 1987 to 1989.

Corrected — the speedometer

The 85 mph speedometer was a federal mandate, not a Chrysler insult

The federal government capped speedometers at 85 mph on nearly every American car for the 1980 model year, as a fuel-crisis measure. It was a coincidence rather than an insult. But see the entry below, which corrects this one.

Corrected again — a correction that was itself wrong

The 85 mph dial was standard equipment, not the only equipment

The first part overstated it, and the second rested on the first. Chrysler’s own dealer catalogue for 1980 — reproduced at the back of the copy of Michigan’s 1980 test book catalogued as NCJ 78761 — lists, for both the Aspen and the St. Regis with the A38 Pursuit Package, standard equipment including “Speedometer — Non-certified, 85 mph” and “Oil Pressure Warning Light (NA with certified speedometer)”. Under optional equipment at extra cost, both cars are listed for “Speedometer(3) — Certified to 125 mph: includes oil pressure gauge in lieu of warning light (NA with A01 Package on St. Regis; NA with clock on Aspen)”.

Footnote 3 to that option reads: “Warning: calibrated speedometer with scale over 85 mph may legally be purchased only by law enforcement agencies for the purpose of law enforcement.”

The federal rule itself has now been read, and it goes further than the catalogue. The 85 mph cap was FMVSS 127, published at 43 FR 10919 on 16 March 1978 and effective 1 September 1979. Its original text already exempted police cars. The clause setting the ceiling ends: “This paragraph does not apply to a speedometer designed for use in or installed in a passenger car sold to a law enforcement agency for law enforcement purposes.”

In other words a police passenger car was never subject to the 85 mph cap, not for a single day of the standard’s life. A further notice at 45 FR 40586 on 16 June 1980 widened the exemption from passenger cars to all police vehicles, on a petition for reconsideration from General Motors, which argued that an 85 mph dial was a safety hazard for officers driving vans and trucks at speed. The standard was then revoked outright: published 18 February 1982 at 47 FR 7250, effective 25 March 1982. It had been law for about thirty months.

So the 85 mph speedometer in a 1980 police car was a purchasing choice, not a legal requirement. What has not been established is which speedometer the California Highway Patrol ordered for the car in the video. Until a purchasing document turns up, the claim that the dog car’s needle matched its top speed is unsupported rather than proven, and it should not have been published as settled.

Correction contributed by Edward Villalpando, who has corrected this channel before. Sources: Michigan State Police, 1980 Police Vehicle Evaluations, reproducing 1980 Dodge Police Fleet Equipment, Cars; and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 127: final rule, 43 FR 10919, 16 March 1978 (FR Doc 78-6509); amendment, 45 FR 40586, 16 June 1980 (FR Doc 80-17956); revocation, 47 FR 7250, 18 February 1982 (FR Doc 82-4084).

Added — context that was missing

The federal-specification car was near the top of its class

In the same model year that California’s 318-powered car was struggling to reach 85 mph, the federal 360 car recorded 122.7 mph at the Michigan test, second in the full-size class. The Plymouth Gran Fury 360 recorded 124.6, the fastest car in Michigan’s 1980 test. And Michigan’s own text records that both full-size General Motors entries, the Buick LeSabre and the Chevrolet Impala, were eliminated from the bid process for failing minimum acceleration requirements.

Source: Michigan State Police, 1980 Police Vehicle Evaluations.

Corrected — air conditioning

The high-speed cut-off was not automatic

They did not. A surviving factory placard on the dashboard of a 1969 California Highway Patrol Polara reads: “AIR CONDITIONER — Turn ‘on’ under 50 mph. Turn ‘off’ over 80 mph. Operate for 5 min. once each week during winter. Do not operate during prolonged idle.” It was an instruction to the officer. The car assumed a professional was driving it.

Correction contributed by Ron Hurwitz.

Corrected — market share

The 85 percent figure does not survive verification

Neither can be confirmed. Chrysler’s own claim was around 60 percent, and a manufacturer’s estimate of its own market position should be read as a claim rather than an audited number. The dominance is not in doubt; the figure is.

Corrected — top speed

132.7 mph, not 133

Michigan’s 1978 results table gives 132.7 mph for the 440-powered Fury, with 0 to 100 mph in 24.8 seconds and the engine rated at 255 horsepower.

Source: Michigan State Police, 1978 Patrol Vehicle Test Results. The 1978 book, since added, prints the same: 132.7 mph, 24.783 seconds to 100 and 255 horsepower.

Corrected — construction

The Polara was a unibody car, not body-on-frame

Chrysler moved every model except Imperial to unit-body construction for 1960, and Imperial followed in 1967. By 1969 the entire Chrysler range, including the C-body Polara, was unibody. The car’s relatively low weight for its size is partly a consequence of that.

Clarified — the record

The 147 mph figure is venue-specific, not a national ranking

There was never a governing body adjudicating police car top-speed records. The 147 mph was recorded in Chrysler’s own testing at the Chelsea Proving Grounds, according to Sanow and Bellah’s history of Chrysler police cars, rather than in a comparative national evaluation. This entry originally went on to say that no police car was recorded going faster for another thirty-seven years. That was wrong as well; see the Dodge Charger below.

Corrected — two errors

The Akron wagon weighed about 5,000 lb, and it was not destroyed

It weighed approximately 5,000 pounds, about two and a half tons. And it was recovered, by the usual account the following day, repaired and returned to service. Accounts of its end differ: sold for scrap in 1905 by one, rebuilt in 1913 and scrapped in 1917 by another. The likelier brake on early motorisation was cost, not the riot.

Updated 5 October 2026. This entry previously stated the next-day recovery as settled, said that similar wagons were then put into operation in Cleveland, Chicago and New York, and stated as fact that cost slowed adoption. The recovery date rests on one line of accounts, the three-city claim on a single source not corroborated by the Chicago or New York police histories checked, and the cost point is an inference.

Corrected — and it contradicted another video

The price of Commissioner Croul’s Packard is not established

As one history of the Detroit police tells it, Detroit’s police commissioner Frank Croul, unable to get approval to spend city money on a car, bought a Packard with his own in 1909 to test the idea; the car answered 2,235 calls between December 1909 and June 1910, and in July 1910 the city approved seven patrol cars, a seven-passenger car and a truck. The price is not established. One video gave $4,500 and the “7 Forgotten Police Cars” video gave $350; neither figure is confirmed. The $350 comes from that single history, and a new 1909 Packard was listed from about $3,200.

Updated 5 October 2026. This entry previously said the Packard cost $350, “confirmed by the Detroit News historical archive, the Detroit Police Museum and the Detroit Police Department’s own published account”. The museum’s wording matches the history the figure comes from, so they are one source, and neither the Detroit News archive nor a separate account from the department itself could be checked.

Source: Kenneth S. Dobson, “How Detroit Police Reinvented the Wheel”, loststory.net; conceptcarz, Packard Model 18 (1909 prices).

The first police cars, 1899 to 1932

Motorised policing did not stop after Akron, and other details in the video

Checking the video again against police department histories, the Model T Ford Club of America and other sources found these points:

• After Akron. Police motorisation did not pause for a decade. Boston’s police department says it put the first car into service as a police cruiser in July 1903, and New York approved its first police car, a Panhard, in May 1905, by one account.
• The Model T’s price. The touring car reached $440 on 1 August 1915, not around 1913: it was $600 in 1913, $550 from August 1913 and $490 from August 1914.
• The first police motorcycles. New York bought two Indian motorcycles in June 1905, by one account. Harley-Davidson says its first police motorcycle went to Detroit in 1908.
• Bootleggers’ speeds. No source was found for rum runners at 80 to 95 mph against police cars at 60 to 65, or for the Buick and Cadillac prices. In the 1920s Cleveland’s Flying Squads had cars the Plain Dealer said could reach 70 mph.
• NASCAR. The link to moonshine running is real, but much of it belongs to the 1930s and 1940s runners avoiding federal liquor tax after Repeal in December 1933, not only to Prohibition. NASCAR was founded in February 1948.
• The 1932 Ford V8 and the state police. No source was found for the California Highway Patrol and other state forces ordering 1932 V8s, or for the V8 becoming the most common pursuit car within eighteen months. By Allpar’s account, the Washington State Patrol bought 1932 Plymouth coupes.
• Bonnie and Clyde. No source was found that gives a count for the Fords the Barrow gang stole. The theft of the 1934 V8 in Topeka on 29 April 1934 and the ambush near Gibsland, Louisiana, on 23 May 1934 are documented. The letter to Henry Ford is quoted correctly; The Henry Ford notes that handwriting analysts have questioned its authenticity.
• The first police packages. Ford dates its first dedicated police package to 1950, on what was a modified 1949 Ford, not to around 1934. Plymouth sold police-oriented cars in the 1930s, by Allpar’s account.

Sources: Boston Police Department history; nypdhistory.com; Model T Ford Club of America; Harley-Davidson press release, 11 September 2007, via Officer.com; Cleveland Police Museum; History.com; NASCAR Hall of Fame; Allpar; Plains Humanities; FBI; The Henry Ford; Police Magazine.

Corrected — the engine, and the failure

The 1979 CHP Camaro had a 350, not a 305

They ran the LM1 350, which was the Z28’s engine throughout 1977 to 1981 and was sold in California. The 305 appears to have reached this channel through two routes: later tribute cars built on the LG3 305, and an assumption on my part about California emissions certification that I did not check before repeating.

The failure was also not a camshaft. The accounts I can find describe twelve cars bought and spread across four CHP regions, of which nine destroyed their engines, none of those nine passing twenty-six thousand miles. The pistons are usually named as the part that let go, and the failures are said to have stopped when the engines were replaced with four-bolt main blocks. Only the Los Angeles cars are reported to have come through it. That is a stronger story than the one in the video, but it rests on enthusiast sources rather than a document, and it is repeated here as what can be established rather than as settled fact. The CHP’s own Special Purpose Vehicle study would close it, and nobody appears to have a copy.

Correction contributed by Edward Villalpando, who has corrected this channel before. A viewer commenting as @chicnwing4519 raised the same point independently and was told he was wrong, which he was not — that reply has been retracted.

Resolved — the evidence turned up

The speed limiter is documented after all, and the sequence is better than the guess

It is documented. The 2002 evaluation’s summary page gives the Camaro’s top speed as 159**, and the footnote at the foot of that page reads “Vehicle equipped with an electronic speed limiter.” The same marker appears against the car in 2001.

The full sequence is more interesting than the inference it replaces. The Camaro recorded 159 mph in 1996 with no marker. In 1998 it was held to 150, and that was the test track rather than the car: the 1998 book carries a separate footnote reading “Due to the limitations of the test track, drivers were told not to exceed 150 mph.” In 1999 it ran 159 again, unmarked. In 2000 it recorded 160 mph , which is the highest figure in any Michigan book this channel holds. The limiter footnote appears the following year, on a 159.

One caution, added after a later check. It is tempting to read the absence of a marker in 1996, 1999 and 2000 as proof the car was uncapped in those years. It is not. The 2000 bulletin carries no limiter footnotes at all — its only note reads “Figures represent the average of four runs” — and it leaves the Ford Police Interceptor unmarked at 129 while stating in its own prose that the car has a 130-mph limiter. An unmarked line in that book means the book did not use markers, not that the vehicle had no limiter. What is documented is the 160 itself, and the marks in 2001 and 2002.

So if 159 is where Chevrolet set the limiter, it set it one mile an hour below a figure the car had already put on the record. The footnote itself says only that a limiter was fitted.

Updated 29 September 2026. This entry previously said the limiter was “set at 159” and that Chevrolet “capped” the car there. The footnote does not give the setting.

Sources: Michigan State Police, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 Police Vehicle Evaluations. The 2002 summary page is described on the Speed Limiters page.

Corrected — top speed

159 mph was exceeded, by the same car

Every part of that is wrong. Checked across the full series, 159 appears seven times, not three. The span between the first and last is six years, not seven. And the figure was exceeded: the 2000 automatic recorded 160 mph, which is the highest top speed recorded by any vehicle, of any kind, in the entire Michigan archive. The headline claim survives — the B4C is the fastest thing the programme ever measured — but on a different number.

Source: Michigan State Police evaluations, 1993 to 2002.

Corrected — identification

The 140-amp alternator does not appear in any Michigan book

Michigan’s own vehicle description pages record 105 amps for the Camaro in 1999, 2001 and 2002, and list the sales code as 1FP87. Books held here list the Crown Victoria at 200 amps in 2005, 2006 and 2009, the Tahoe at 250 in the 2021 to 2025 books and the Charger at 220 from 2012. (This entry first said that every other police vehicle in the archive carries between 130 and 250 amps, and that 105 amps is the civilian Camaro figure; see the entry on the 2002 book on the Michigan archive corrections page.)

Which leaves an open question this page is not going to close prematurely: either the cars Michigan tested were not B4C police units, or they were and the 140-amp figure is simply wrong. Either way it should not have been offered to buyers as something to check. It has been withdrawn. If anyone holds a General Motors B4C order guide giving the package’s alternator rating, it would settle this.

Sources: Michigan State Police vehicle description pages, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2021 to 2025.

Corrected — option codes

9C3 is the special service package, not a size class

9C1 and 9C3 are use categories, not sizes. 9C3 is the special service package — unmarked and detective work, without spotlight provision and with civilian interior trim. The Impala 9C3 is the example most people have seen. Michigan’s own specification pages list the 2025 Chevrolet Blazer EV under the sales code “9C1/9C3”, one vehicle offered under both codes, which is what two ordering categories look like rather than two size classes.

The same paragraph dates the three codes to 1972. That has not been traced to a General Motors document and is not being repeated until it is.

Correction contributed by the viewer @CJ-ou9md. Supporting source: Michigan State Police, 2025 and 2026 specification pages.

Corrected — the record claim

The Polara’s figure had been beaten long before 2006

The Camaro B4C had already done it, repeatedly and much earlier: 155 mph in 1995, 159 in 1996, and 160 in 2000. The video makes the right distinction twenty minutes later, where it calls the Charger the fastest ordinary police sedan and excludes the limited-run coupes, but the opening does not carry that qualifier and it should have. This entry then called the Charger’s 150 the fastest figure recorded by a full-size pursuit sedan. That does not hold either: the Caprice beat it, as the next entry shows, and an imported Volvo S70 T5 sedan had already run 153 mph in 2000. What survives is narrower: the 2006 Charger was the first American police sedan to beat the Polara’s 147.

Caught by the viewer @backyard-junkyard, who had watched both videos in the same week.

Corrected — superlative

Not the fastest American police sedan. The Caprice is

The Chevrolet Caprice 6.0L recorded 156 mph in the 2015 evaluation, against the Charger’s best of 152. Seven Caprice entries sit above the Charger’s highest figure, across six model years — 153 and 154 in 2012, 154 in 2013, 155 in 2014, 156 in 2015, and 155 in both 2016 and 2017. Six was the count of years, not of entries; 2012 supplied two. The Caprice of 2011 to 2017 was built in South Australia (the Caprice page gives the sources).

Source: Michigan State Police evaluations, 2011 to 2017. The 2015 figure is a retest; see the Speed Limiters page.

Corrected — a figure that is not Michigan’s (withdrawn)

The 1994 Caprice did not record 141 mph in Michigan testing (withdrawn: it did)

This entry was itself wrong, and the videos were right. Michigan did publish a 1994 evaluation, now held, and it records the Caprice 5.7 at 141.2 mph; see “Corrected again — two corrections that were themselves wrong” on the Michigan archive corrections page.

Corrected — detail

The police Magnum ran for four model years, not two

The video states the Magnum was submitted in 2006 and 2007. Michigan tested it across 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, nine entries in all. Eight of those were on this page until the archive found a ninth: the 2006 book lists two 3.5-litre Magnums, a pursuit car at 132 mph and a special-service car at 117, and Michigan’s own preface confirms it by writing that “one of the Dodge Magnum’s” is special service. The second car had been merged into the first and its figures lost. The 2005 car recorded 117 mph and was not put through the vehicle dynamics test, Dodge having stated that it was not intended for pursuit work.

Clarified — what the number is

The Crown Victoria’s 127 to 130 mph was recorded with a limiter fitted

Michigan’s reports carry an electronic speed limiter marker against the car in 1996, 1999, 2001 and 2002, and the 1998 bulletin marks it too. The 2000 bulletin states in prose that the Police Interceptor “features a 130-mph speed limiter”, without saying whether it was standard. From 2003 onward the point becomes universal — see the standing note below.

There is a detail in the 1996 book worth adding, because it is the best thing in this entry. That year the Crown Victoria was the one vehicle of five fitted with limiters that failed to reach the speed its manufacturer had set for it. The figure it managed, 135 mph, is the fastest a Crown Victoria was ever recorded in this programme. It was never beaten in the fifteen further years the car was tested, through to the 2011 book, its last appearance.

Updated 29 September 2026. This entry previously called 128 to 130 mph “a limiter figure” and said the 2000 limiter was standard; the bulletin does not say so.

Sources: Michigan State Police evaluations, 1996 to 2011.

Applies to several videos

From 2003, Michigan’s car top speeds are permitted speeds

This is not a single error in a single video so much as something that runs underneath a number of them, and it is easier to state once.

Up to 2002, the published results marked individual vehicles as fitted with electronic speed limiters, one footnote at a time. From the 2003 evaluation they stopped doing that: the 2003 bulletin wrote a single line under the top speed table instead, “All vehicles are equipped with electronic speed limiters.” Not some of them. In Michigan’s own 2005 report it sits in the General Information section, as “All vehicles listed in this report were equipped with electronic speed limiters.” But it does not stay absolute: by the 2015 book (2014 is not held) it reads “All vehicles listed in this report were equipped with electronic speed limiters unless otherwise noted, or with the exception of certain motorcycles,” and that qualified wording runs through 2020. From 2021 the motorcycle clause is gone again: “…unless otherwise noted.”

Then the test itself changed. Up to the 2016 book the stated objective was “to determine the actual top speed attainable.” From the 2017 book it reads “to verify the electronically limited top speed reported by the manufacturer.” The methodology followed three years later, in 2020. The motorcycle objective was never changed, so the 2020 book contains both: it measures what a motorcycle can do and verifies what a car has been permitted to do, fifty pages apart.

So any car’s top speed quoted on this channel from a 2003 or later book — the Charger’s 152, the Caprice’s 156, the Tahoe’s 139 — was recorded with a limiter fitted: at most the fastest that vehicle was allowed to go, and not a measure of the fastest it could. Where a video has presented one of those as a capability, that is the correction. A fitted limiter does not prove the figure is the limit, though: in 1996 Michigan reported that a limited Crown Victoria never reached its preset speed. Before 2021 the Michigan books held here name a setting only in passing (the 1992 governed Caprices; Harley-Davidson’s speed-limited downloads in the 2015 and 2018 books); the 2021 book is the first to print a “Manufacturer Limited Top Speed” on specification pages, three of them, and the later books on more.

Updated 29 September 2026. This entry previously credited the 2003 line to Michigan (it is a federal bulletin’s), said motorcycles were never covered by the whole-field statement, called every such figure the fastest the vehicle was allowed to go, and applied it to every vehicle rather than every car.

Sources: NLECTC bulletins for 2003 and 2004; Michigan State Police evaluations, 1996, 2005, 2006, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2025 and 2026. The relevant wording is set out year by year on the Speed Limiters page.

Corrected — attribution

Grumman did not build the PBY Catalina

The Catalina was a Consolidated Aircraft design. The radar-history sources say only that Grumman approached Automatic Signal about landing-gear damage on the type, which is a different claim from Grumman having built it.

Removed — unsourced

The claim that Chief Parker began desegregating the LAPD

This could not be substantiated and has been removed from the website page. It sits awkwardly against the documented record, including Parker’s own recorded remarks. Some integration did occur during his sixteen-year tenure, but presenting him as a desegregation figure requires a source that has not been found.

Clarified

The black-and-white predates Parker by thirteen years

LAPD black-and-whites date to at least 1937. What Parker did was standardise the scheme, codify what went on the doors, and make it famous. He did not invent it.

Corrected — nine details, checked against the Michigan books

The American Police Car page repeated the Polara record, and got eight other details wrong

A Volvo S70 T5 sedan matched the Polara at 147 mph in 1998 and ran 153 in 2000, entered in Michigan’s police category. What holds is that no American police sedan beat the Polara before the Charger. A Jeep Cherokee was already in Michigan’s testing in 1993, and in 1992 (see the entry on the 1992 book on the Michigan archive corrections page). The Tahoe was a police-package entry in 1997, one of five alongside six special-service vehicles, and returned to the police category in 2005. In 1980 both General Motors cars eliminated were full-size; the mid-size Malibu 305 was not. The 2012 Interceptor sedan ran 130 to 131 with its naturally aspirated V6 but 148 with the EcoBoost, and the Tahoe it was compared with was two-wheel drive. In 2019 the EcoBoost Utility was the fastest vehicle tested and the quickest on four wheels, but all seven motorcycles reached 60 mph sooner. And the Camaro ran 155 in 1995; its 159s came in 1996 and in every year from 1999 to 2002, and the 2001 and 2002 figures carry Michigan’s speed-limiter mark.

Source: Michigan State Police evaluations and NLECTC bulletins, 1980 to 2019. The 1980, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2005 figures above were read directly from the printed pages.

Corrected — the 1950 Ford police package, on the history page and the timeline

Ford says its 1950 package was the first; the pages now say so in Ford’s name

Ford says it was the first carmaker to offer a police package, in 1950. Hagerty dates Ford’s package to 1949, and General Motors calls Chevrolet’s 1955 package the first factory-installed one, so the pages now attribute the claim. What is not in doubt is that Ford was selling a police package five years before Chevrolet. The 1950 package included heavy-duty springs, shock absorbers, clutch and interior trim and an extra-heavy-duty generator and battery, the generator a sixty-ampere unit that held its output at idle; Hagerty adds heavy-duty brakes and cooling. Oil coolers and certified speedometers appear in later packages, and no 1950 source mentions heavy-duty fans. No source was found for “no two forces did it the same way”, so it is gone. The 1930s timeline entry now describes Plymouth’s police-oriented cars rather than packages, so that it no longer contradicts the 1950 entry. And the 1969 entry now matches the correction above: in the Michigan tests held here, a Volvo sedan matched the Polara in 1998 and beat it in 2000, the Camaro B4C passed it in 1993 (with the 1991 bulletin since added, the timeline now says a Camaro passed it in 1991; see the entry on the 1978 to 1994 books on the Michigan archive corrections page), and no American police sedan went faster until the 2006 Charger.

Sources: Ford, “The Long History of Ford Police Vehicles”; Police Magazine, “Ford Celebrates 75 Years of Making Patrol Vehicles” (quoting Ford’s 1950 press release); Hagerty; General Motors, “Chevrolet’s 70-year history of building police vehicles” (April 2025); American Car Historian (reproducing the 1950 brochure); DodgeGarage; Allpar; Michigan State Police evaluations and NIJ bulletins, 1991 to 2006.

Corrected — the early years on the history page and the timeline

Boston had a police car by 1903, and the Akron wagon went back to work

Akron’s 1899 wagon is usually described as the first motorised police vehicle, but Boston’s police department says it put the first automobile into service as a police cruiser in July 1903. Accounts give the wagon’s top speed as 16 or 18 mph. It was pushed into the Ohio Canal in 1900, hauled out and returned to service; whether it was scrapped in 1905 or 1917 depends on the account. New York bought two police motorcycles in June 1905, by one account, and Harley-Davidson says its first police motorcycle went to Detroit in 1908. The Model T fell from $850 in 1908 to $440 by 1915. No source was found for the claims about slower police cars, the bootleggers’ Hudsons, criminals buying the V8 first, or the political case for faster cars; in the 1920s Cleveland’s Flying Squads had cars the Plain Dealer said could reach 70 mph. The 1934 entry now gives the documented events: the stolen V8 in which Barrow and Parker were killed on 23 May 1934, and the letter to Henry Ford, received by the Ford Motor Company that April, whose authenticity handwriting analysts have questioned.

Sources: Boston Police Department history; nypdhistory.com; Harley-Davidson press release, 11 September 2007, via Officer.com; Model T Ford Club of America price tables; Hagerty; Cleveland Police Museum; The Henry Ford; FBI; Bruce Goldfarb, “The First Police Car”; Akron Police Department and Frank Fowler Loomis (Wikipedia, the latter citing Chilton, Operation & Maintenance, 1908).

The 1950 Ford

The oil-bath air filter was standard equipment, not part of the police package

It was fitted to ordinary civilian Fords of the period too. The engine range was also understated: the top option was a 110-horsepower “V8 H.P. Special,” not the 100-horsepower V8. And the package was not offered on the Mainline, because that nameplate did not exist until 1952.

The 1950 Ford

New York’s 430 Fords are the documented early order, and nine other details are corrected

Checking the video again against Ford’s own history, Hagerty, Police Magazine and period material found these points:

• First of its kind. That the package was the first sold in America is Ford’s own claim; see the history-page entry above.
• Dragnet. No source was found that names a single car for Sergeant Joe Friday in the 1951–59 television series. Jack Webb used real Los Angeles cases with officers as technical advisers, and according to Road & Track, by the mid-1950s Ideal Toys sold a model of a black-and-white 1955 Ford as “the authentic Dragnet police car”.
• The early buyers. No source was found for California and Texas highway patrols as early buyers. The documented early order is the New York Police Department’s 430 Fords, which a period Ford advertisement called “one of the largest orders ever placed by any department”.
• Price, speed and sales. No source was found for a price of about $1,700, a speed of about 85 mph, or sales of several thousand police Fords in 1950. Hagerty says the package “did not increase speed”.
• Why the package was needed. No source was found for radios drawing more current than the rest of the electrical system, or for cars wearing out “within months”. A documented case of the problem is Weehawken, New Jersey, whose police chief wrote in The American City in November 1946 that his radio cars’ generators gave five to ten amps at idle instead of the thirty prescribed, and that a generator burned out in two months.
• The dealer network. No 1950 figure was found showing Ford with the largest dealer network.
• The model line. The 1950 series were the Deluxe and the Custom Deluxe, and a 1950 Deluxe police car is documented, so the package was not confined to the Custom.
• The results. No figures were found for departments reporting lower maintenance costs.
• The Hudson Hornet. No evidence was found of departments running Hornets as pursuit cars, though Hudson did advertise “Wasp Police” and “Jet Police” models in 1954.
• What followed. The 1955 Buick Century Model 68 was a special order for the California Highway Patrol, not a police package. The packages that followed Ford’s were Chevrolet’s in 1955, Dodge’s in 1956 and Plymouth’s in 1957.

Sources: Ford, “The Long History of Ford Police Vehicles”; Hagerty; Police Magazine; Jalopnik (quoting the period advertisement); Road & Track (16 July 2024); EBSCO Research Starters; The American City, November 1946, as transcribed by the Weehawken Time Machine archive; Curbside Classic (period Hudson advertisements and dealer counts); DodgeGarage.

The Chrysler C-300

The Daytona figure is 127.58 mph, not 130

That is the two-way flying-mile average from Daytona Speed Week, still the fastest of the meeting by more than seven miles an hour. The 130 figure circulates as a general top-speed claim and is not the Daytona number.

The AMC Matador

The Dukes of Hazzard appearance was overstated

That show’s patrol cars were late-1970s Dodge and Plymouth B-bodies. AMCs appear only in a handful of 1979 episodes.

The Hudson Hornet

The 7X was a racing crate engine, not a police option

The genuine police connection is the Severe Usage parts catalogue, which classified Hudson’s high-performance components as equipment for taxis and police cars. The 7X itself was not something a department could order.