The manufacturer

Ford police vehicles

One hundred and sixty entries across thirty-seven Michigan tests — every year the programme has run, without a single absence.

The fastest Ford in every test

Shaded rows are the years the fastest Ford was a sport utility. All 160 entries are in all 209 Ford entries, filterable to Ford.

What Ford actually sold to police

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 — a two-door special service package that existed because Ford could not sell a fast enough sedan. In 1987 it ran 139.6 mph while the Crown Victoria managed 115.

And from 2019 it is a sport utility, permanently. The Police Interceptor Utility with the 3.0 EcoBoost ran 150 mph and was the quickest vehicle in the entire test. Ford has not brought a faster car since, because after 2018 it stopped bringing police cars at all.

Four disqualifications

Ford has had four vehicles thrown out of the Michigan test, more than any other manufacturer.

Two of those five are natural-gas cars, which were never going to be quick and were submitted to be measured rather than to win. The LTD II and the Fairmont are the real ones, and both come from the downsizing years when Ford had nothing fast to bring.

And one refusal

In 1998 Ford declined to let its Expedition and both Explorers run the road course at all, stating 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 the motorcycles beat it — and by 2025 Michigan tested no police sedan of any kind. The manufacturer that refused to lap its own trucks ended up winning with one.

Where Ford sits in the record

Thirteen Ford entries carry the source’s own limiter footnote — more than any other manufacturer. The Crown Victoria’s 129 mph in 2000 is the clearest case: Ford fitted a 130-mph limiter as standard that year, and the book says so.