Corrections

Corrected — acceleration

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

What was published: that the Special Service Package Mustang reached sixty miles an hour in about six and a half seconds, and that this matched a contemporary Ferrari 308.

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

What was published: a top speed of roughly 137 mph.

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

What was published: that the 85 mph speedometer was a final indignity specific to this car.

The federal government capped speedometers at 85 mph on nearly every American car for the 1980 model year, as a fuel-crisis measure. Every car got one. The true version is a coincidence rather than an insult, and it is a better one: the dog car’s actual top speed happened to match the universal cap almost exactly, making it the one car in America that could genuinely bury its own needle.

Added — context that was missing

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

What was published: that the St. Regis was a disaster, correctly localised to California and one model year, but without the figure that proves it.

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 full-size police car in America that year. And Michigan’s own text records that both 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

What was published: that Mopar police cars had an arrangement that automatically disengaged the air-conditioning compressor at speed.

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

What was published: that Chrysler held around 85 percent of the North American police car market by 1968. Figures of 80 percent have also appeared here.

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.

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 rather than in a comparative national evaluation. The accurate statement is that no police car was recorded going faster for another thirty-seven years.

Corrected — two errors

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

What was published: that the 1899 Akron electric patrol wagon weighed less than half a ton, and that the mob which pushed it into the canal in 1900 killed both the vehicle and the idea.

It weighed approximately 5,000 pounds, about two and a half tons. And it was recovered the following day, repaired and returned to service, with similar wagons subsequently put into operation in Cleveland, Chicago and New York. What slowed adoption was cost, not the riot.

Corrected — and it contradicted another video

Commissioner Croul’s Packard cost $350, not $4,500

Detroit’s police commissioner Frank Croul bought the department’s first car in 1909 with his own money after the city council refused to fund one. The price was $350, confirmed by the Detroit News historical archive, the Detroit Police Museum and the Detroit Police Department’s own published account. The “7 Forgotten Police Cars” video states $350 correctly, so for a period two videos on this channel gave different prices for the same car.

Corrected — overstatement

The speed limiter was stated as fact when it is an inference

What was published: that Michigan’s test books carry a speed-limiter marker against the Camaro’s figure, proving the recurring 159 mph was a ceiling rather than a top speed.

The footnote exists in those books as a standing legend explaining the marker. It was not verified as attached to the Camaro’s line, and it should not have been claimed. The evidence remains suggestive: 155 mph in 1995, 159 and 157 in 1996, 159 in 2001 and 159 in 2002, from two different engine families. Three identical figures is what a ceiling looks like, but it is inference, not documentation.

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.

Not every error goes out in a video. These are mistakes in the written research — on this site, in the test archive, or in the reading of a source document. Several were found by checking my own published work against the books a second time.

What was published: that the Michigan State Police have evaluated patrol vehicles every autumn since 1975, a date this site repeated from the National Institute of Justice.

Michigan’s own books say 1976. The 1980 report states the programme was developed in 1976, and the 1996, 1999 and 2001 editions count their twentieth, twenty-third and twenty-fifth years from it. Four departmental statements against one federal summary. A third date, 1978, circulates in the trade press and is explicable rather than wrong: the first published report covers model year 1979, tested in the autumn of 1978.

Sources: Michigan State Police evaluations, 1980, 1996, 1999 and 2001. The full account is here.

What was published: that the earliest sign of electronic speed limiting in the Michigan record is the 1998 book, where ten of fifteen vehicles carry the footnote.

The footnote “Vehicle equipped with speed limiter” is already in the 1995 book. The 1996 test is the clearer illustration: five of ten vehicles carry it — the Crown Victoria at 135 mph, the 4.3-litre Caprice at 120, the Cherokee at 112, the CNG Crown Victoria at 107 and the Explorer at 106 — while the Caprice 5.7’s 139 does not. One table, two kinds of number, separated by an asterisk. 1997 carries no limiter footnote at all.

Sources: Michigan State Police evaluations, 1995 to 1998.

What was published: that no police car was recorded going faster than the 1969 Polara’s 147 mph for thirty-seven years.

That is true of sedans. It is not true of police cars. Michigan recorded the Chevrolet Camaro B4C at 155 mph in 1995, 159 in 1996, 157 in 1997, 159 in 1999, 160 in 2000 and 159 in 2002. The Camaro was a two-door pursuit car rather than a general patrol vehicle, which is why it rarely enters the argument, but it is in the same test books. The claim now reads “no police sedan”.

Sources: Michigan State Police evaluations, 1995 to 2002.

What was published: that 2012 was decisive, because the Tahoe recorded 139 mph against 130 for the new Ford Police Interceptor sedan.

Both figures are right, but a Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 with the 6.0 ran 154 mph in the same test. The sport utility beat Ford’s sedan, not the sedans. The outright crossover is 2019, when the Police Interceptor Utility with the 3.0 EcoBoost ran 150 mph and was the quickest vehicle in the entire test. By 2025 Michigan tested no police sedan of any kind for the first time in the programme’s history.

Sources: Michigan State Police evaluations, 2012, 2019 and 2025.

1997 is the year five of the eleven vehicles tested were sport utilities, which is significant but not the first. The following year Ford declined to let its Expedition and both Explorers run the road course at all, stating they were not designed or intended for pursuit.

Sources: Michigan State Police evaluations, 1995, 1997 and 1998.

Not an error of mine, but one worth recording because anyone checking the source will meet it. The Illinois evaluation of semi-marked patrol cars (NCJ 96258) states in its abstract that the cars without roof lights had “6.5 percent fewer accidents per million vehicle miles”. Its own Table 7 gives 12.6 against 4.4 — a reduction of sixty-five percent. A digit appears to have been lost in the abstract.

The tables are correct and this site uses them. The general rule that falls out of it: where a report’s abstract and its tables disagree, the tables win — and the abstract is the part that gets indexed, quoted and repeated.

The article that uses these figures is here.

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 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.