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History
Longer stories from the record — where the programme came from, and what happened to the cars that ran through it.
Some things in this archive are findings: a figure that turns out to mean something other than what it appears to, a pattern visible only across several years. Those live under Research.
These are the other sort. Narratives that run the length of the archive rather than sitting inside one book — the people who started the tests, and the nameplates that arrived, dominated, disappeared and occasionally came back.
Everything is built from the reports themselves and linked to the years it draws on, so you can follow any claim back to the page it came from.
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California tested police cars too
The surviving 1975/76 results sheet from the Los Angeles County Sheriff — and the earliest comparative police vehicle test on this site.
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Where the police car console came from
A 200-page study of the 1969 Ford and Plymouth that asked whether an officer could physically reach the equipment they were expected to operate.
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The federal police car that almost happened
A 1975 Nova with 16 kilobytes of database in the trunk, a seat frame that doubled as a roll bar, and a termination memo listing four reasons.
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Who actually started the Michigan State Police tests
Three men are named in one book’s acknowledgments as having originated the programme — and the 1975 start date everyone repeats is a year out, by the department’s own count, four times over. The real reason it began involves two bids four dollars apart.
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The police Mustang leaves, and comes back with no engine
In 1993 two Special Service Package Mustangs ran their last Michigan test, the only cars in the field without anti-lock brakes. Thirty-three years later the badge returned as an electric crossover — and stopped shorter than any car the programme has ever measured.