The manufacturer

Ford police vehicles

Two hundred and thirteen entries across forty-eight Michigan tests — every test year held here, without a single absence.

The fastest Ford in every test

Shaded rows are the years the fastest Ford was a sport utility. This table gives one year per row; all 215 Ford entries are in the filtered results table.

What Ford brought to Michigan

The year the fastest Ford stopped being a car

Read the Type column down the table. For most of the programme’s history the fastest thing Ford brought was a sedan. Twice that changed.

1983 to 1993 it was a Mustang in every test held here except 1985, whose surviving scoring sheet lists only sedans — a two-door special service package entered beside Ford’s sedans. In 1987 it ran 139.6 mph while the Crown Victoria managed 115.

And from 2019 to 2026 it is a sport utility in every test. The Police Interceptor Utility with the 3.0 EcoBoost ran 150 mph and was the quickest vehicle on four wheels in the test. Ford has not brought a faster vehicle since, and the Police Interceptor sedan had made its last appearance in 2018.

Two disqualifications

Two Ford vehicles are named in the books held here as thrown out of the Michigan test — as many as Buick, and more than any other manufacturer.

Both come from the downsizing years. This page used to list two natural-gas cars as well. Neither the 1998 bulletin nor the 1999 book calls them disqualified: the 1998 natural-gas Crown Victoria’s brake test was stopped by an alternator failure, and the 1999 natural-gas Police Interceptor missed the printed minimums without the book naming it out. See the vehicles that failed.

And one exception

In 1998 Ford’s Expedition and both Explorers did not run the road course at all: Ford had advised that they were not designed or intended for pursuit.

Twenty-one years later the Police Interceptor Utility was the quickest and fastest vehicle on four wheels in the test — only motorcycles were quicker, and it was faster than all of them — and by 2024 Michigan tested no police sedan of any kind. The manufacturer that had said its sport utilities were not for pursuit later brought the fastest vehicle in the test with one.

Where Ford sits in the record

Twenty-six Ford entries carry the source’s own limiter mark, from 1994 to 2002 — more than any other manufacturer. From 1996 the mark is a footnote; in 1994 it is the preface’s list of cars with electronic limiters, which names the Crown Victoria, the Taurus and the Explorer. The 2000 Police Interceptor’s 129 mph carries no footnote, but the 2000 bulletin’s own text says the car “features a 130-mph speed limiter”.