The vehicle
Chevrolet Caprice 9C1
Thirty-two entries across thirteen Michigan tests. The only police car in this archive to be killed, replaced fifteen years later by a car from another continent, and killed again.
The Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 leaves the Michigan books after 1996 as the fastest police sedan in America, at 139 mph. General Motors ended it because the plant that built it was needed for trucks.
It returns in 2011 as an Australian Holden with a badge on it, and immediately beats everything in the test. Six years after that it is gone again, and this time nothing replaces it either.
Every test
The principal car each year, with the best braking any Caprice recorded that year. Shaded rows are the Australian-built car.
| Year | Vehicle | 0–60 s | Top mph | Best 60–0 ft | Lap s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Chevrolet Caprice | 10.32 | 118 | 150.8 | 88.32old course |
| 1988 | Chevrolet Caprice | 10.59 | 116 | 150.3 | 88.6old course |
| 1989 | Chevrolet Caprice | 9.82 | 122 | – | 86.2old course |
| 1990, 1991, 1992 — books not located | |||||
| 1993 | Chevrolet Caprice | 8.77 | 132 | – | 85.87old course |
| 1994 — books not located | |||||
| 1995 | Chevrolet Caprice | 8.21 | 135 | – | 83.07old course |
| 1996 | Chevrolet Caprice 5.7L | 8.02 | 139 | 133.1 | 83.35old course |
| 1997 – 2010 — not absent from the archive. Absent from the world: General Motors ended the rear-drive Caprice after 1996 and built nothing to replace it for fifteen years | |||||
| 2011 | Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 6.0L | 6.18 | 148 | 128.3 | – |
| 2012 | Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 6.0L | 5.91 | 154 | 125.8 | – |
| 2013 | Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 6.0L | 6.03 | 154 | 128.3 | 95.94 |
| 2014 | Chevrolet Caprice 6.0L | 6.01 | 155 | 126.8 | 94.98 |
| 2015 | Chevrolet Caprice 3.6L | 7.84 | 147 | 126.8 | 96.82 |
| 2015 | Chevrolet Caprice 6.0L § | 6.17 | 156 | 126.8 | 95.09 |
| 2016 | Chevrolet Caprice 6.0L RWD | 6.26 | 155 | 129.9 | 97.17 |
| 2017 | Chevrolet Caprice 6.0L RWD | 6.11 | 155 | 127.1 | 97.58 |
Note the difference between the two kinds of gap. 1990–92 and 1994 are books this archive has not located. 1997–2010 is not a gap in the record — it is a gap in the world. There was no Caprice to test.
The first one, and why it mattered
Between 1987 and 1996 the Caprice goes from 118 mph to 139, and from 10.32 seconds to sixty down to 8.02. The step is the Corvette-family V8 that arrives for 1994 and produces the first genuinely fast full-size police sedan in fifteen years.
The 1996 test is also where Ford brought a Crown Victoria without anti-lock brakes purely so it could be braked against its own ABS car on the same surface on the same day. The difference was sixteen feet — that story is here.
The Caprice left the test as the fastest police sedan in America and did not come back for fifteen years. That is not a car failing. That is a factory being wanted for something else.
What Ford did with the fifteen years
With the Caprice gone, the Crown Victoria took roughly eighty percent of the American police sedan market and held it for over a decade — running 128 to 130 mph in every single test from 1999 to 2011. It did not need to be fast. There was nothing to be faster than.
The Australian one
The car that returns in 2011 is a Holden, built in Elizabeth, South Australia, and it is a different proposition entirely.
| 1996 | 2011 | |
|---|---|---|
| 0–60 mph | 8.02 s | 6.18 s |
| Top speed | 139 mph | 148 mph |
By 2014 it recorded 155 mph, and 156 on retest the following year — which remains the fastest figure any police sedan has posted in this archive. It held that through 2016 and 2017 as well.
And in 2012 it stopped from sixty in 125.8 feet, breaking a record that had stood under the twelve-stop procedure — one of three cars in that single test to stop inside 127 feet under the new twenty-stop one.
That 2012 book is also the one usually cited as the year the sport utility beat the sedan. The Tahoe ran 139 mph against 130 for Ford’s new Police Interceptor sedan. But the Caprice ran 154 in the same test, so the sedan had not been beaten at all — that did not happen until 2019.
Where it sits in the record
| Figure | Vehicle | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 156 mph — fastest police sedan in this archive § | Caprice 6.0L | 2015 |
| 5.91 s — quickest to 60 | Caprice 9C1 6.0L | 2012 |
| 125.8 ft — shortest stop of the twenty-stop era to that point | Caprice 9C1 6.0L | 2012 |
| 118 mph — slowest recorded | Caprice | 1987 |