History

The Ford Police Interceptor: the complete history

One name on very different machines: an engine in the early 1950s, a whole police car by 1954, the Crown Victoria, a Taurus-based sedan, and the sport utility that was the fastest vehicle in Michigan’s 2019 test.

An engine before it was a car

Ford dates its first police package to 1950 (Hagerty puts it at 1949), and Ford describes it as the first offered by any carmaker; the story of that car is here. The Interceptor name arrived with it or soon after, on an engine rather than a car. Exactly when is harder to say than it should be, because the accounts that trace back to Ford do not agree with each other.

So the safest statement is this: the name went onto a Ford police engine in the early 1950s, most probably in 1952 on the 125-horsepower V8, and onto a whole police car in 1954. That last step is the one that matters, because it is where the name stopped describing a motor and started describing a vehicle. Anyone who gives you the first year with confidence is quoting one Ford document and not the others.

The name on the big engines

The name kept turning up on Ford’s big police engines. In the mid-1960s it was on a 428-cubic-inch Police Interceptor V8, rated at 360 horsepower in both Over-Drive Magazine’s 1966 Ford fact sheet and Street Muscle’s account of a 1967 police car. By 1978 it was on a 460: the Massachusetts State Police Museum describes its 1978 LTD as a “C-Code 460 ‘Interceptor’ powered sedan”.

That is not the Ford the Michigan State Police saw. The first Michigan test held here, the 1978 evaluation, had an LTD II with a 400 two-barrel from Ford. It ran 115 mph, and the book eliminated it, with the Buick, for failing the minimum acceleration requirements.

Twenty years without the name in the Michigan books

From 1978 to 1998 the Michigan books and bulletins list Ford’s police vehicles by their model names: LTD II, LTD, Fairmont, LTD Crown Victoria, Crown Victoria, Taurus, the Explorer and Expedition sport utilities, and the Mustang, which Ford sold to police as a special service package and whose story is here. None of the entries transcribed from those documents carries the word Interceptor, and a search of the twelve from those years that have a text layer finds no use of it anywhere in them.

The car that would take the name was already there. The body-on-frame, rear-drive Crown Victoria first appears in the 1983 book as the LTD Crown Victoria S, and the 1992 book is the first held here with the 4.6-litre version. It ran in every Michigan test from 1983 to 2011.

The books record only what Ford entered the car as. When Ford itself first called the Crown Victoria a Police Interceptor is a separate question; at least one account outside the books dates the name to 1992, and I have not found a document that confirms it.

1999: the Crown Victoria becomes the Police Interceptor

In the 1998 bulletin Ford’s sedan is still a Crown Victoria. In the 1999 book the photographs show a Crown Victoria body under a new heading, and the test vehicle description makes it formal.

The sales code did not change with the name: the 1996 book already prints P71 for the Crown Victoria, and the 2001 book prints it for the natural-gas Crown Victoria as well. It is the code collectors still ask for, and the guide to identifying a genuine police package car covers where to look for it.

What followed was thirteen years of the same basic car. The books’ specification pages show its rated output rising, from 215 horsepower in 1999 to 235 in 2001 and 250 by 2005, but the performance figures hardly moved. The principal Police Interceptor recorded between 128 and 130 mph in every test from 1999 to 2011, a ceiling consistent with the “130-mph speed limiter” the 2000 bulletin describes, and between 8.36 and 9.14 seconds to 60; the 2011 car was slower to 60 than the 1999 one. It was rarely the performance leader. In 2005, with no Charger in the field, two versions of it shared the honours: the standard 3.27-axle car had the highest top speed, and the version with the optional 3.55 axle was quickest to 60 and fastest round the road course. In its last year, 2011, the version with the optional 3.55 axle recorded 119 mph, slower than every Chevrolet and Dodge sedan and sport utility in that test.

The full run, with braking and lap times for every year from 1983, is on the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor page.

2012: the name moves to two new vehicles

The 2012 book has no Crown Victoria. In its place Ford brought six vehicles carrying the name: four versions of a new Taurus-based Police Interceptor sedan, front- or all-wheel drive, and two of a Police Interceptor Utility built on the Explorer. The book calls this the 2012 model year; Ford’s own history calls the new sedan and utility 2013 models.

The turbocharged sedan was three seconds quicker to 60 than the car it replaced and nineteen miles an hour faster, in one model year. It was still not the fastest car in the test: a Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 with the 6.0 recorded 154 mph that year. The naturally aspirated Police Interceptor sedans recorded 130 to 131 mph, much the same as the new Utility’s 131.

Neither has much in common with the Crown Victoria beyond the name. The Panther was body-on-frame and rear-drive with a V8; the new sedan was front- or all-wheel drive with a V6.

Sedan and Utility side by side, 2012 to 2018

From the 2014 test the summary tables call the pair the PI Sedan and the PI Utility. For seven tests the sedan was faster than the Utility. The fastest EcoBoost sedan recorded 148 to 150 mph in every test from 2012 to 2018, reaching 150 in 2013 and 2016. The Utility recorded 131 to 133 mph in the same years, with the EcoBoost version no faster than the standard one on top speed. In 2016 Ford also entered a 2.0-litre EcoBoost front-drive PI Sedan, which recorded 121 mph.

The sedan’s last Michigan test was 2018.

2019 onward: the Utility alone

The 2019 book tested the redesigned Utility, labelled a 2020 model, in three forms: a 3.3-litre V6, a hybrid, and a 3.0-litre EcoBoost. The EcoBoost recorded 150 mph and 5.77 seconds to 60. It was the fastest vehicle in the entire evaluation, the quickest on four wheels, and it lapped Grattan faster than every Charger in the field. The 3.3 and the hybrid each recorded 137 mph, the hybrid reaching 60 in 7.27 seconds.

Ford describes the 2020 hybrid as “the first pursuit-rated hybrid SUV”. The same 2019 Michigan book repeats that there is no sanctioning body behind the phrase “pursuit rated”, which is a story of its own.

From 2020 to 2026 the 3.0 EcoBoost Utility recorded 148 mph in every test. By 2024 Michigan tested no police sedan of any kind, for the first time in the books held here. The name that started on an engine is now on a sport utility, and since 2019 the Utility has been the only Police Interceptor in the Michigan books.

The Utility’s whole Michigan record, back to its first appearance as a 1994 Explorer that never topped 113 mph in fourteen tests, is on the Police Interceptor Utility page.

Every Michigan test of the name, 1999 to 2026

The fastest Ford Police Interceptor entry in each test, under the name the source prints. Gold rows are the Taurus-based sedan, blue rows the Utility.