The vehicle

Ford Police Interceptor Utility

Fifty-three entries across twenty-nine Michigan tests. Eighteen years without topping 113 mph, and then the fastest vehicle in the 2019 test.

Every test

The principal vehicle each year, with the best braking any Explorer or Utility recorded that year. Shaded rows are the Explorer era. Two-wheel-drive, E85 and hybrid variants are in every Utility and Explorer entry.

Fourteen tests, never above 113 mph

From 1994 to 2008 the Explorer never once exceeded 113 mph, and in six of those fourteen tests it did not reach 105. Its braking ranged from 140.9 to 184.1 feet, across the two-stop and twelve-stop procedures.

Ford said as much. In 1998 its Expedition and both Explorers did not run the road course at all: the bulletin records that Ford had advised they were not designed or intended for pursuit, and they were not subjected to vehicle dynamics testing. Michigan ran them through everything else, and printed the numbers.

2012, and a different vehicle

The Explorer becomes the Police Interceptor Utility, and the figures move a long way from the last Explorer in these books, the 2008 car. The braking procedure changed in between, from twelve stops to twenty, so the stopping distances are not directly comparable.

Twenty-seven miles an hour and twenty-eight feet. That is the year the sport utility stopped being a compromise — though not yet the year it won, because a Caprice ran 154 mph in that same test.

2019

The 3.0-litre EcoBoost arrives and does something no sport utility had done:

Not roomier and nearly as quick: quickest, fastest and roomier. Not ahead on everything, though. Three of the 2019 sedans stopped shorter (the V6 Charger in 126.9 feet against its 131.5), the hybrid sedan was rated at 38 mpg combined while the Utility’s figures were not yet certified, and in 2020 the HEMI Chargers ran 149 mph to its 148.

By 2024 Michigan tested no police sedan of any kind, for the first time in the books held here. The Utility was still there.

Where it sits in the record

Six rows in this table carry the source’s own limiter mark: 1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2002 (in 1994 the mark is the preface’s list of cars with electronic limiters). A mark says a limiter was fitted, not that the figure shown is its setting.