Michigan test archive
Police car tests of the 2000s
Front-wheel drive, Grattan, and the HEMI. 10 Michigan State Police vehicle tests; the books for 2007 and 2008 are not held here.
A front-wheel-drive Impala replaces the Caprice in 2000 and promptly beats the Police Interceptor around the road course. Vehicle dynamics moves to Grattan Raceway in 2001, where an AM General Hummer is entered in the police category and needs 18.55 seconds to reach 60 mph. Dodge returns in 2002 with the Intrepid, its first police-package sedan in the published results since 1989, and by 2006 a HEMI Charger is running 150 mph, the best by an American police sedan in these books to that point.
The decade also brings the first motorcycles, in 2007 — and a BMW that out-accelerates every car the programme had tested to that point.
The tests
| Model year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 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 |