Research
Sixteen feet: what anti-lock brakes were worth
In 1996 Ford submitted a Crown Victoria without ABS to the Michigan tests for brake testing only, and it was braked beside a Crown Victoria that had it. Same model, same day, same site. The difference was about one car length.
Almost everything we know about police cars comes from comparing different vehicles and arguing about the variables. Different weights, different tyres, different drivers, different days. It is why the Michigan tests exist at all — running everything through the same procedure, on the same surface, in the same few days, removes most of the argument.
Very occasionally the books hold something closer to a direct comparison: two cars of the same model, braked the same morning, one with anti-lock brakes and one without.
In 1996, Ford submitted a second Crown Victoria for brake testing only. It was not there to run the road course or chase a top speed. It was braked without anti-lock brakes on 16 September 1995, at 8:34 that morning; Ford’s ABS car followed at 11:36.
The result
| Ford Crown Victoria | Average deceleration | 60–0 mph |
|---|---|---|
| With anti-lock brakes | 29.02 ft/s² | 133.4 ft |
| Without anti-lock brakes | 25.90 ft/s² | 149.5 ft |
Sixteen feet. Slightly less than the length of the car doing the stopping, a 17.7-foot Crown Victoria.
That is the whole finding, and it is worth sitting with for a moment, because sixteen feet is both very small and very large depending on where you are standing. It is nothing on a test track. It is the difference between stopping behind something and stopping inside it.
Two cars of one model, braked on one day. The books and bulletins held here print the same with-and-without comparison in 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995 too, and the 1992 pair of Crown Victorias came out sixteen feet apart as well.
Where the comparison sits
By 1996 anti-lock brakes were not new: Michigan’s own 1996 specification asks for “power assisted, four-wheel disc, antilock” brakes. The non-ABS car was submitted for brake testing only.
The Michigan record shows how recently cars without anti-lock brakes were still in the tests. Three years earlier, in 1993, the bulletin marks anti-lock brakes on every car in its lap table except the two Special Service Package Mustangs, and its braking table runs a Crown Victoria and a Taurus each way, 9.7 and 15.7 feet apart from 60 mph at their average rates. The 1994 book calls its non-ABS cars “submitted for brake testing only”, beside anti-lock cars of the same model.
Two years earlier it had been the other way round. In the 1992 test the Crown Victoria that ran everything had conventional brakes, and a second, anti-lock Crown Victoria was the one tested for braking only. It averaged 26.41 ft/s² against 23.81: a computed 146.6 feet against 162.6, sixteen feet again. The 1994 book brakes a Crown Victoria and a Taurus each way, 10.3 and 11.8 feet apart, and the 1995 bulletin does the same, 5.7 and 13.0 feet apart.
From 1992 to 1996 the books and bulletins held here make the same comparison in five consecutive tests. After 1996 the test results held here list no car braked without anti-lock brakes.
What sixteen feet looks like in context
The honest way to judge that gap is against the spread Michigan was seeing between different vehicles in the same era.
In 1980, before anti-lock brakes existed on anything in the test, the field was scattered. The shortest stop recorded that year was 154.6 feet, by a mid-size Malibu; the longest was 187.9, by a full-size Ford. More than thirty feet separated cars that were otherwise doing the same job, and the variation came from brake sizing, weight distribution and tyres rather than from any single component.
Against that, sixteen feet from one system is substantial — roughly half the entire spread of the 1980 field, recovered by fitting one option.
And then look at what happened once everything had it. By 2013, all thirteen vehicles in the test stopped within 7.2 feet of each other — four manufacturers, three body types, V6s and V8s and turbos and a full-size sport utility, every one of them between 128.2 and 135.4 feet.
| Year | Spread across the field | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | 33 ft (154.6 – 187.9) | no anti-lock brakes anywhere |
| 1996 | 21.6 ft (133.1 – 154.7); 16 ft between the ABS and non-ABS Crown Victorias | the changeover, measured |
| 2013 | 7.2 ft (128.2 – 135.4) | universal ABS, universal discs |
That is the second finding hiding inside the first. The braking column had been one of the most brutal discriminators in the programme — a place where a bad police car was exposed immediately. Within two decades of ABS becoming standard it separated almost nothing. Every car could stop.
Where the gains went instead
Braking did not stop improving. It simply stopped being a way of telling police cars apart, and the absolute numbers kept falling.
The 1993 automatic Camaro’s 127.6-foot stop, the bulletin’s projection from its average over two stops, is the shortest of the two-stop era in the books held here; the procedure changed to twelve stops in 1999. In 2012, under a new twenty-stop procedure, three cars came in shorter in a single test, led by a Chevrolet Caprice at 125.8 feet, though figures from different procedures are not directly comparable. By 2017 a rear-drive Dodge Charger was averaging 31.44 ft/s², around 123 feet. And in 2026 a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, all-wheel drive and battery electric, has a projected stop of 122.45 feet, the shortest projected by a car under the twenty-stop procedure.
Across thirty years and three braking procedures the shortest figures kept falling, spread across every manufacturer at once — though figures from different procedures are not directly comparable, and none of it is like the sixteen feet a single box of valves bought in one 1996 test.
One caveat, stated plainly
The 1996 comparison is as clean as this programme gets, but it is not a laboratory. Two physical cars are two physical cars: different pads bedded differently, different tyres from the same specification, a different sequence of runs through the day. Michigan’s procedure controls for a great deal — same site, same instrumentation, same morning, distances projected from measured deceleration rather than paced out — and it does not control for everything.
The book also does not describe the exercise as a controlled experiment. It records that a non-ABS Crown Victoria was submitted for brake testing only, and it prints the numbers. The interpretation here is ours; the figures are the department’s.
With that said: sixteen feet is a wide margin. It is not the sort of gap two sets of brake pads produce on their own.
One Crown Victoria without anti-lock brakes, one with, at the same site on the same day. Sixteen feet.
Why it matters to anyone with one of these cars
If you own a mid-nineties patrol car, or are looking at one, this is the figure that should shape how you drive it. An early-nineties police sedan without ABS is not a slightly worse version of the same car. In the eight with-and-without comparisons these books and bulletins hold it needed from about 6 to 16 feet more, and it needs a driver who knows how to modulate a pedal rather than stand on it.
It also explains something you will see in the classifieds. The books held here show police cars without anti-lock brakes as late as the 1993 bulletin, which calls its automatic Mustang “Non-ABS”, and non-ABS cars braked beside anti-lock ones from 1993 to 1996. Two apparently identical cars from the same year can differ here, and it is worth checking the build sheet rather than assuming — our guide to identifying a genuine police package car covers where to look, and the option codes reference lists what to look for.
Sixteen feet was worth paying for in 1996. It still is.