Michigan test archive

1995 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test

The LT1 era at full song: 155-mph Camaros, a 129-mph station wagon — and the Taurus that finally showed up, eight years late.

Set this page beside the 1989 test and the transformation is total. The qualification bar that stood at 12.7 seconds to 60 six years earlier now demanded 10.0 flat — with 80 mph in 17.2, 100 in 28.2, 110 mph inside one mile and 120 inside two, plus, for the first time, a formal braking floor of 24.2 ft/s². Every carbureted sedan in this archive’s earlier pages would have failed it. Nine vehicles ran between 27 and 29 August 1994: five police package cars and, in the program’s now-formalized second category, four “special service” vehicles — two B4C Camaros, an LT1 Caprice station wagon, and a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee, the first hint of the SUV era in these pages.

Three storylines stand out. The 5.7-liter LT1 Caprice ran 60 in 8.21 seconds and 100 in 22.43 — quicker to 100 than the 1983 test’s Mustang — and the station wagon version did 9.07 and 129 mph. The Camaros rewrote the program’s record book outright: 6.45 seconds to 60, 100 mph in 16.48, 155 mph, and a 1:19.20 lap average, with the automatic beating the 6-speed both to 60 and around the course. And the Ford Taurus — promised to Michigan for 1988 and withdrawn before the 1987 test — finally arrived as a 3.8 police package… and missed the new 0–60 gate by eight tenths.

Also worth noticing: for the first time in this archive there is no Chrysler sedan in the field at all. The only Chrysler product present is a Jeep. This page is built from the NIJ’s TAP bulletin (September 1994); the full 1995 book was never digitized.

The 1995 qualification bar. To qualify, a vehicle had to reach 60 mph within 10.0 seconds, 80 mph within 17.2, and 100 mph within 28.2; reach 110 mph within one mile and 120 mph within two; average at least 24.2 ft/s² on the two impending-skid stops; and pass the brake sequence — four controlled decelerations from 90 mph, an impending-skid stop from 60, repeated after a four-minute cool-down, and a panic stop within its own lane.

The police package cars

Source: NIJ Technology Assessment Program bulletin, September 1994 — synopsis of the August 1994 test. Acceleration figures are four-run averages; dynamics is the average of the fastest 12 of at least 16 timed laps by at least four drivers. This bulletin printed no quarter-mile times. ** = vehicle equipped with speed limiter, the bulletin’s own footnote: it marks three of the nine — the 4.3L Caprice here, and the Caprice station wagon and Jeep Cherokee below.
Car	Engine	0–60 (s)	0–80 (s)	0–100 (s)	Top speed (mph)	Dynamics (s)
Chevrolet Caprice 5.7L	5.7L LT1 PFI	8.21	13.63	22.43	135	83.07
Ford Crown Victoria	4.6L PFI	9.68	16.06	26.71	132	85.14
Chevrolet Caprice 4.3L	4.3L (265 cid V8) PFI	11.32	18.93	33.12	120 **	86.31
Ford Taurus	3.8L PFI	10.80	19.18	33.58	128	87.08
Chevrolet Lumina	3.1L PFI	11.19	19.58	34.04	118	88.30

Measured against the year’s gates: only the LT1 Caprice and the Crown Victoria cleared the acceleration requirements. The 4.3 Caprice, the Taurus and the Lumina all missed the 10-second 0–60 gate and the 28.2-second 0–100 gate. Note the 4.3 here is a 265-cubic-inch V8 — not the old 262 V6 of the eighties pages. The bulletin does not name the year’s winner — the scoring belongs to the full report (see below).

The special service vehicles

Source: NIJ TAP bulletin, September 1994. Special service vehicles are tested alongside the police package cars but sold for roles outside sustained pursuit service. ** = vehicle equipped with speed limiter (the bulletin’s footnote).
Vehicle	Engine	0–60 (s)	0–80 (s)	0–100 (s)	Top speed (mph)	Dynamics (s)
Chevrolet Camaro (automatic)	5.7L LT1 PFI	6.45	10.51	16.48	155	79.20
Chevrolet Camaro (6-speed)	5.7L LT1 PFI	6.58	10.74	16.46	152	80.19
Chevrolet Caprice Station Wagon	5.7L LT1 PFI	9.07	15.24	25.36	129 **	84.89
Jeep Cherokee (4WD)	4.0L PFI	10.57	19.86	36.97	111 **	85.91

Gold row: fastest vehicle of the entire test — the automatic B4C Camaro’s 1:19.20 lap average, 6.45-second 0–60 and 155 mph are all records for the program’s published series to this point. The 6-speed car was two hundredths quicker to 100. And read the wagon’s row twice: a 129-mph station wagon that out-accelerated three of the five police package sedans.

Complete acceleration data — every 10-mph increment

Four-run averages in seconds, from the bulletin’s acceleration table (Table 4, p. 2). All ninety cells are legible in the NIJ scan.
0 to…	Camaro auto	Camaro 6-spd	Caprice 5.7	Caprice 4.3	Wagon 5.7	Lumina 3.1	Cherokee 4.0	Crown Vic 4.6	Taurus 3.8
20 mph	1.53	1.76	1.77	2.71	1.97	2.32	2.18	2.06	2.28
30 mph	2.49	2.61	2.95	4.33	3.37	3.84	3.65	3.47	3.69
40 mph	3.60	3.66	4.33	6.11	4.88	5.59	5.29	5.09	5.55
50 mph	4.85	5.06	6.00	8.36	6.61	8.22	7.76	7.28	8.00
60 mph	6.45	6.58	8.21	11.32	9.07	11.19	10.57	9.68	10.80
70 mph	8.25	8.62	10.65	14.71	12.03	14.56	14.10	12.48	14.57
80 mph	10.51	10.74	13.63	18.93	15.24	19.58	19.86	16.06	19.18
90 mph	13.39	13.45	17.66	25.36	19.13	26.19	26.85	20.91	24.64
100 mph	16.48	16.46	22.43	33.12	25.36	34.04	36.97	26.71	33.58

Brakes — a threshold with teeth, and two cars tested twice

Braking’s weight in the scoring doubled to 20 points this year, and for the first time the impending-skid average became a formal qualification gate: 24.2 ft/s² or the car is out. Only the automatic Camaro was brake-tested, and it led the field: 29.57 ft/s², a computed 131.0-foot stop from 60 mph. The two Caprice sedans were next — the 4.3L at 28.39, the 5.7L at 28.22. Across the whole field the averages ran from 29.57 down to 24.21, the non-ABS Taurus sitting essentially on the qualification floor.

The bulletin’s braking table has ten columns for nine vehicles: the Crown Victoria and the Taurus each appear twice, tested with and without anti-lock brakes. All four runs cleared the floor; in each pair the ABS run stopped harder, by 0.99 ft/s² for the Crown Victoria and 2.14 for the Taurus.

Complete braking data — both phases, ten test configurations

Source: NIJ TAP bulletin, September 1994, Table 5, p. 3. Two impending-skid stops from 60 mph separated by a four-minute cooling period, measured by fifth wheel; each stop is preceded by four decelerations at 22 ft/s² from 90 mph. The final column is the stopping distance from exactly 60 mph computed from the average deceleration rate. All vehicles ran with anti-lock brakes except the two runs marked non-ABS.
Vehicle	Phase I speed	Phase I distance (ft)	Phase I rate	Phase II speed	Phase II distance (ft)	Phase II rate	Average rate	60–0 computed (ft)
Chevrolet Camaro (automatic)	60.6	132.3	29.86	60.3	133.6	29.27	29.57	131.0
Chevrolet Caprice 5.7L	61.1	143.1	28.06	60.7	139.6	28.39	28.22	137.2
Chevrolet Caprice 4.3L	61.2	143.0	28.17	60.4	137.2	28.60	28.39	136.4
Chevrolet Caprice Station Wagon	60.7	150.4	26.35	60.7	155.0	25.57	25.96	149.2
Chevrolet Lumina	60.6	163.2	24.20	60.1	157.6	24.65	24.43	158.5
Jeep Cherokee (4WD)	61.0	153.3	26.11	60.1	147.9	26.27	26.19	147.9
Ford Crown Victoria (ABS)	60.7	152.4	26.00	60.7	147.0	26.96	26.48	146.2
Ford Crown Victoria (non-ABS)	60.6	157.5	25.08	60.2	150.5	25.90	25.49	151.9
Ford Taurus (ABS)	60.7	151.5	26.16	60.3	147.3	26.55	26.35	146.9
Ford Taurus (non-ABS)	60.1	167.3	23.22	60.2	154.7	25.20	24.21	159.9

Gold row: best braking in the test. The 6-speed Camaro was not brake-tested. The bulletin lists one Crown Victoria and one Taurus in its field and prints each twice here, with and without anti-lock brakes; it does not say which configuration ran the acceleration and top-speed tests.

Ergonomics and fuel economy

Source: NIJ TAP bulletin, September 1994. Ergonomics scores are totals over 29 attributes; one car per model was scored, since interior dimensions are essentially the same. EPA city figures to 0.1 mpg from manufacturer-supplied data; Ford’s Crown Victoria figure was not available at publication.
Vehicle	Ergonomics (pts)	EPA city (mpg)
Chevrolet Caprice	234.25	16.7
Chevrolet Caprice Station Wagon	228.18	16.7
Ford Crown Victoria	196.32	—
Ford Taurus	195.33	18.8
Jeep Cherokee (4WD)	176.71	14.5
Chevrolet Camaro	162.22	16.6 / 16.8
Chevrolet Lumina	158.93	18.7

The Caprice 4.3’s city figure was 17.6. The big Caprice’s 234.25 is the highest ergonomics total in this archive so far — a rolling office at the peak of its development, two model years before GM ended it.

What the bulletin doesn’t hold

This TAP bulletin is a synopsis; the detailed report it references — with the per-lap dynamics, quarter-mile times, final weighted scoring, the year’s winner, bid prices and hardware specifications — was never digitized. Those numbers will be added to this page from an original copy of the full 1995 book; as far as I can tell, they are not available anywhere else online.

What 1995 settled

The program’s center of gravity had moved. A qualification bar of 10.0 seconds to 60 — unthinkable when a 12.72-second Diplomat was competitive — now sorted a field where every engine was injected, the fastest patrol sedan ran 135 mph, and the pursuit specialists were 155-mph Camaros. Of the five police package cars, only two cleared the gates; the mid-size experiments — Lumina, Taurus — showed that front-drive sixes weren’t the answer yet.

And there’s a quieter milestone in the field list: a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee, tested seriously, timed properly, printed alongside the sedans. The SUV had entered the record. Within a decade, this archive’s tables would belong to its descendants.

Source. National Institute of Justice, Technology Assessment Program bulletin, September 1994: Michigan State Police Tests 1995 Patrol Vehicles — the official synopsis of the August 1994 test. All figures transcribed directly from the bulletin. Read the official record at the DOJ virtual library, and see how these videos are researched.