The archive
Michigan State Police Vehicle Test Archive
Every Michigan State Police patrol vehicle test I have been able to source — forty-nine years of them, every year from 1978 to 2026, though for 1979 only the method and schedules survive. Most are transcribed from reports, bulletins and other documents held here; the books for 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2016 and 2017 are not held.
Once a year, since the middle of the 1970s, the Michigan State Police have taken every police vehicle the manufacturers will submit to a proving ground and a road course and measured them against each other. Acceleration to the hundredth of a second. Top speed, and the distance needed to reach it. Twenty braking stops. Thirty-two timed laps. In the books that print a method, a scoring formula then converts all of it into a dollar figure that is added to each manufacturer’s bid.
It is not a magazine road test. It is a purchasing instrument, and that is exactly why it is trustworthy: the department has to buy the car it publishes numbers about. The results have shaped what American police forces drive for half a century.
These pages are the results, year by year, transcribed from the reports themselves rather than from anyone’s summary. Where a scan was damaged or a figure could not be recovered, the page says so instead of guessing.
1970s — the record barely exists
One full test year, the method and schedules of a second, and the federal research that surrounds them. Read the decade →
| Model year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1977 — by the department’s own counts, the programme’s first comparative evaluation, run in the autumn of 1976 (the 1990 preface speaks of testing beginning in 1977). Not located | |
| 1978 | A 440 Plymouth Fury at 132.7 mph, the Buick and the Ford eliminated on acceleration, and the Fury the adjusted low bid on all four price sheets |
| 1979 | Schedules and method only, no results: the test of October 1978, with five cars on its schedules |
The tests, year by year
Forty-nine tests across six decades. Each year links to its results — acceleration ladders, top speeds, braking, lap times, ergonomics and fuel economy, as far as the source holds them, with the source report cited on the page. For 1979 only the method and schedules survive.
1980s — The last of the big sedans
Rear-drive V8s, carburettors, and a qualification bar every car had to clear. The Mustang arrives as a police car and nobody quite knows what to do with it.
| 1980 | The Gran Fury takes the full-size class at 124.6 mph; a Volare damaged on a warm-up lap is the mid-size adjusted low bidder |
| 1981 | Five full-size sedans, four mid-size V8s, and a Buick that could not reach 100 mph |
| 1982 | Six V8s in one class, a K-car curiosity, and a Mustang whose numbers were not printed |
| 1983 | The Mustang’s 132-mph debut, a propane-fuelled Canadian Plymouth, a slant-six Diplomat |
| 1984 | Thirteen cars, two Mustangs, four cars scored, and a book printed before the bids were opened |
| 1985 | No test book; the scoring sheet, bid record and a draft specification are held; four sedans scored, and the Diplomat with the adjusted low bid |
| 1986 | Fourteen cars and the first port-injected engines in these books; a five-speed Mustang runs 137 mph |
| 1987 | The bar goes up: two 139-mph Mustangs, and a quarter of a second ends the Diplomat’s bid |
| 1988 | The Diplomat comes back from the dead; a 5-speed Mustang runs 6.90 seconds to 60 |
| 1989 | Fuel injection reaches the 350 — and the carburetted M-bodies still clear the bar |
1990s — The pony car years, and the end of the Caprice
The first Camaros, the LT1 era at full song, the Mustang SSP’s farewell, a 141-mph Caprice and the last one at 139 mph — and then the first test since 1986 in the books held here with no Caprice in it at all.
| 1990 | The test moves to Ford’s proving ground; a 6.64-second Mustang, and the Caprice 5.7 beats the Crown Victoria in every scored category |
| 1991 | The first Camaros in these books: 150 mph and a 1:21.08 lap, from the federal results bulletin (the full book is not held) |
| 1992 | A 152-mph Camaro, a Jeep Cherokee as the first four-wheel-drive vehicle tested in these books, and two governed Caprices; the Caprice outscores the new 4.6 Crown Victoria on the bid score |
| 1993 | The last Mustangs in these books before the Mach-E, beside a 154-mph Camaro; a Taurus inside the 0–100 time by 0.01 sec |
| 1994 | A 141.2-mph Caprice, 153-mph Camaros, the first Explorer and five electronic limiters |
| 1995 | The LT1 era at full song: 155-mph Camaros and a 129-mph station wagon |
| 1996 | The last Caprice runs 139 mph, and Ford submits a non-ABS Crown Victoria for brake testing only |
| 1997 | The first test since 1986 in the books held here with no Caprice in it; the Crown Victoria misses all three acceleration times, the first by 0.05 seconds |
| 1998 | Speed limiters on ten of fifteen vehicles, and Ford’s sport utilities do not run the road course |
| 1999 | The Crown Victoria becomes the Police Interceptor; the special-service trucks get an appendix of their own |
2000s — Front-wheel drive, Grattan, and the HEMI
The Impala replaces the Caprice, the tests move to a proper road course, Chrysler comes back, and a Dodge Charger takes every record worth having.
| 2000 | A front-drive Impala replaces the Caprice; a Volvo with chassis tuning developed with the CHP runs 153 mph |
| 2001 | Vehicle dynamics moves to Grattan Raceway — and an AM General Hummer runs in the police category |
| 2002 | Mopar returns with the Intrepid, the pursuit Camaro leaves, two new cars miss on braking |
| 2003 | The Interceptor is rebuilt from the frame up; the lap-scoring method changes |
| 2004 | Two Interceptors, one axle ratio apart — and three cars within 0.11 seconds over two miles |
| 2005 | The Tahoe returns as a police-package PPV, and an E85 patrol vehicle appears for the first time in the books held here |
| 2006 | The HEMI Charger takes the American police-sedan top-speed mark the Caprice had held in these books since 1994 |
| 2007 | Motorcycles enter the programme, and a BMW out-accelerates every car tested to that point |
| 2008 | E85 across the whole category — identical performance, a third less range |
| 2009 | The field collapses to eight vehicles, and a Charger breaks six seconds to 60 |
2010s — The Crown Victoria leaves the tests and the Utility takes over
The Crown Victoria goes, Ford replaces one car with six, and by the end of the decade the fastest vehicle in the test is a sport utility.
| 2010 | The same eight cars, tested again — the archive’s cleanest year-on-year repeat |
| 2011 | The Caprice returns after fifteen years and beats every other car in the test |
| 2012 | The Panther era ends; Ford brings six cars, and car braking runs to twenty stops |
| 2013 | E85 vanishes entirely, and a turbocharged Ford takes the fastest lap of the year |
| 2014 | Mid-year 2014.5 cars tested beside their own earlier versions; a 155-mph Caprice |
| 2015 | A retest printed in red, and a four-wheel-drive Tahoe retested after leaving the road course |
| 2016 | A four-cylinder police sedan, the first electric motorcycle, and a new braking record |
| 2017 | The Impala disappears — and Michigan’s own data exposes the speed limiters |
| 2018 | The first hybrid police sedan at 40 mpg, and the first pickup in the police category |
| 2019 | A 150-mph sport utility, two overheating Tahoes, and Michigan accepts LASD’s result for one |
2020s — The sedans go
Hybrids, pickups and the first battery-electric police cars — and the first tests in the books held here with no four-door saloon in them.
| 2020 | A Yamaha sets what were then archive bests to 60 and 100 mph, and the motorcycle top speed |
| 2021 | Ten vehicles and no motorcycles; a new Tahoe stops fifteen feet shorter than the old one |
| 2022 | The first electric car in the archive: a Mustang Mach-E reaches 60 mph in 4.03 seconds |
| 2023 | The Mach-E returns and reaches 60 mph in 3.93 seconds, the quickest car in the archive |
| 2024 | The first test in the books held here with no police sedan of any kind, and two electric cars: the Mach-E and the first Blazer EV |
| 2025 | A second year without a sedan, and the electric Blazer is the quickest car in the test |
| 2026 | The Mach-E returns as a GT with the shortest projected stop by a car under the twenty-stop procedure |
How the test works
Six weighted categories in most of the books that print a method (seven in the 1978 and 1980 books), and the weights have moved. The 1996 and 2001 books weight vehicle dynamics 30, acceleration 20, braking 20, top speed 15, ergonomics and communications 10, fuel economy 5; the worked examples in the 2005 report and the 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2013 books move five points from top speed to braking (braking 25, top speed 10), though the December 2004 bulletin still printed the old weights. In 1980 fuel economy was worth 25 points and braking 10. Fuel economy lost the most weight; vehicle dynamics, acceleration and braking all gained.
Scoring works by deviation. In each category the best vehicle becomes the benchmark and scores zero; everything else is penalised by how far short it falls, proportionally, multiplied by the category weight. Lower is better. Michigan then takes one percent of the lowest bid received, multiplies each vehicle’s total by that figure, and adds the result to its actual bid. The lowest adjusted bid wins the contract — and the state pays the real bid price, not the adjusted one.
Performance, in other words, does not win the contract outright. It buys a discount against the sticker. That is the method as the documents from 1985 to 2013 that print it describe it; the 2015 book prints no scoring method, and the books from 2018 on print purchasing criteria but no category weights, weighted total or bid adjustment.
A correction worth making
It is often written that these tests began in 1975. The department’s own books say otherwise, four times over. The 1980 report states that the Police Patrol Vehicle Evaluation and Purchasing Program “was developed in 1976 by the Policy Development and Evaluation Section of the Michigan Department of State Police, in cooperation with the Purchasing Division” — a statement made three years after the fact. The 1996 book calls itself the 20th annual evaluation, the 1999 book the 23rd year, the 2001 book the 25th. All four agree on a first comparative evaluation for the 1977 model year.
The books from 2018 on add the part that reconciles it: the MSP began testing patrol cars in the 1950s, but only the vehicle with the lowest quotation was tested, against a pass-or-fail standard. When the quotations came in four dollars apart, the department decided to test every vehicle and compare them. Testing is older than the programme; the programme is what began in 1976.
What is missing, and why
From 1978 to 2026 every year now has a page. Two are held only in part: 1979, of which only the title page, method, schedules and maps survive, with no results; and 1985, held as the State Police scoring sheet, the bid record and the draft specification, but not the test book. Eleven others are held as federal results bulletins rather than full reports: 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991 (the National Institute of Justice’s bulletin, with Chevrolet’s specification form for the Caprice), 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2004. Each page says what its source is.
Before 1978 the record runs out. The programme’s first comparative evaluation, of the 1977 models in the autumn of 1976, has not been located (the 1990 preface says instead that testing began in 1977, which, read as a calendar year, would make the 1978-model test the first). The earliest book held here, for the 1978 models, was already written to share its results with other agencies. Beside Michigan’s books there is a separate published record from those years: the IACP’s National Law Enforcement Vehicle Evaluation Program, run in California in late 1978 under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which tested nine models in both federal and California emissions trim. That book and Michigan’s 1980 report, in the copy the IACP distributed (NCJ 78761), were funded by the same federal grant — volumes one and two of a single series.
On “pursuit rated”
The phrase appears constantly in listings and advertising. Michigan’s own books from 2018 to 2026 state that there is no sanctioning body and no specific performance criteria behind it and that pursuit capable is the more appropriate term (the 2026 book says “pursuit capability”), and the 2018 to 2024 books add that neither the Michigan State Police nor the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has the authority or credentials to award the term to any vehicle.
What Michigan does have is a purchasing specification, printed in the same books: 60 mph within 9.0 seconds, 80 within 14.9, 100 within 24.6; 110 mph within 4,838 feet (0.92 mile) and 120 mph within 8,985 feet (1.70 miles); an average deceleration of 25.79 ft/s² across twenty stops; and completion of all thirty-two laps without major component failure. Meeting it does not certify a vehicle as pursuit rated; it justifies that a vehicle can do the job the MSP requires.