Michigan test archive

1989 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test

Fuel injection reaches the Caprice’s V8 — 9.82 seconds to 60, 122 mph — and the carbureted sedan’s clock starts running out.

For 1989 the Chevrolet 350 traded its four-barrel carburetor for throttle-body injection, and the numbers moved like a decade had passed in one model year: 60 mph in 9.82 seconds — the quickest U.S.-specification sedan in the books held here since the 1978 Plymouth Fury (9.23) (the Canadian Caprices of 1986 and 1987 had run 9.59 and 9.49) — 100 mph in 29.35 seconds, a top speed of 122 mph, and a lap average of 1:26.20, just over two seconds a lap clear of every other sedan in the test. Eleven cars ran between 16 and 20 September 1988, and the injection map tells the story: TBI on all three Chevrolets, port injection on three Fords, and carburetors on every Chrysler product in the field.

The qualification bar tightened again — 12.7, 23.1 and 41.7 seconds — and it started claiming injected victims: the 305 Caprice and the port-injected Crown Victoria both missed the 0–100 gate. The carbureted 4-barrel M-bodies, in what was becoming an annual ritual of defiance, sailed through — and posted 119.1 mph for the Diplomat and 120.2 for the Gran Fury; the M-body Gran Fury had run 121.4 in 1984 and the Diplomat 121.5 in 1986. Meanwhile the Mustangs ran 137.2 and 138.0 mph, and for the first time the automatic out-lapped the 5-speed, 1:21.56 to 1:22.51, and the automatic’s average is the quickest in the books held here to that point.

This page is built from the NIJ’s preliminary TAP Alert bulletin (October 1988); the full November book has not been found online. The bulletin also carried a period gem: an offer of free MS-DOS software called AutoBid — built on this very test data, needing 384K of RAM — to help fleet managers rank patrol cars by performance or value. Agencies could order a copy by writing in on letterhead.

The 1989 qualification bar — tightened. To qualify, a car had to reach 60 mph within 12.7 seconds, 80 mph within 23.1, and 100 mph within 41.7 (from 13.6/24.3/43.2 in 1988), plus 110 mph within two miles, then pass the brake sequence: four controlled decelerations from 90 mph, an impending-skid stop from 60, repeated after a four-minute cool-down, and a panic stop within its own lane.

All eleven cars — dynamics, acceleration, top speed

Source: NIJ Technology Assessment Program Alert, October 1988, NCJ 113947 — preliminary results of the September 1988 test. Acceleration figures are four-run averages; dynamics is the average of the fastest 12 of at least 15 timed laps. This bulletin printed no quarter-mile times; they belong to the full report. — : not tested for dynamics.
CarEngine0–60 (s)0–80 (s)0–100 (s)Top speed (mph)Dynamics (s)
Ford Mustang (automatic)5.0L-PFI H.O.8.6013.8522.89137.281.56
Ford Mustang (5-speed)5.0L-PFI H.O.7.0411.8219.24138.082.51
Chevrolet Caprice5.7L-TBI9.8217.5929.35122.086.20
Ford Crown Victoria5.8L-VV H.O.11.9820.4636.55119.188.24
Plymouth Gran Fury5.2L-4BBL11.7720.9738.02120.288.63
Dodge Diplomat5.2L-4BBL11.8421.6938.95119.188.66
Chevrolet Caprice5.0L-TBI12.3523.3542.88114.188.83
Ford Crown Victoria5.0L-PFI12.3921.8842.14110.089.49
Chevrolet Caprice (V6)4.3L-TBI15.5729.8058.16109.092.51
Dodge Diplomat5.2L-2BBL14.3825.3655.58113.6—
Plymouth Gran Fury5.2L-2BBL14.9826.4158.13111.2—

Measured against the year’s gates: the TBI Caprice 5.7, both 4-barrel M-bodies and the Crown Victoria 5.8 cleared everything. The 305 Caprice (42.88) and the port-injected Crown Victoria (42.14) both missed the 41.7-second 0–100 requirement, and the 5.0 Crown Victoria only just touched the required 110. The bulletin does not name the year’s winner — the scoring belongs to the full report (see below).

See the original pages: Tables 4, 5 and 3 in the bulletin
Scan of the page holding Tables 4 and 5 of the October 1988 TAP Alert: acceleration times and top speeds for eleven cars, and braking results for five
Table 4, “Results of Acceleration and Top-Speed Testing”, and below it Table 5, “Results of Braking Test”, which this page shows in the brakes table further down. National Institute of Justice, Technology Assessment Program, TAP Alert, October 1988, NCJ 113947, PDF page 4 of the file (printed page 3). Open full size.
Scan of Table 3 from the October 1988 TAP Alert: road course averages for eleven cars, two marked not available
Table 3, “Results of Vehicle Dynamics Testing”. National Institute of Justice, Technology Assessment Program, TAP Alert, October 1988, NCJ 113947, PDF page 3 of the file (printed page 2). Open full size.
Complete acceleration data — every 10-mph increment, all eleven cars
Four-run averages in seconds, from the bulletin’s acceleration table.
0 to…Mustang 5-spdMustang autoCaprice 5.7Crown Vic 5.8Gran Fury 4BBLDiplomat 4BBLCaprice 5.0Crown Vic 5.0Diplomat 2BBLGran Fury 2BBLCaprice 4.3
20 mph1.842.002.232.672.582.722.462.193.143.302.84
30 mph2.653.383.544.524.264.454.193.995.435.575.02
40 mph3.844.835.126.536.126.246.276.107.748.007.64
50 mph5.386.407.298.798.658.829.138.7710.5210.8511.48
60 mph7.048.609.8211.9811.7711.8412.3512.3914.3814.9815.57
70 mph9.3811.0213.3415.6415.3215.5116.9916.4719.3219.9720.90
80 mph11.8213.8517.5920.4620.9721.6923.3521.8825.3626.4129.80
90 mph14.9618.0222.6727.1328.2529.0230.8929.3435.8937.7341.09
100 mph19.2422.8929.3536.5538.0238.9542.8842.1455.5858.1358.16

Brakes, ergonomics, fuel economy

Source: NIJ TAP Alert, October 1988, NCJ 113947, Table 5, printed page 3. Each 60–0 stop is an impending-skid stop made after four controlled 90–0 decelerations; Phase II repeats the sequence after a four-minute cool-down. The bulletin brake-tested five cars and labels each column with the car and its engine, as in the first column here; it calls the Mustang the manual. The table has a row for the stopping distance from 60 mph at the average rate, but prints no figures in it, so none is quoted here; the model pages compute it from the average rate, as for the other books of the period.
Car60–0 Phase I (ft)60–0 Phase II (ft)Avg decel (ft/s²)
Dodge Diplomat 5.2L-4BBL146.8145.126.32
Ford Crown Victoria 5.8L-VV H.O.154.4150.526.09
Chevrolet Caprice 5.7L-TBI152.8148.326.03
Plymouth Gran Fury 5.2L-4BBL146.5149.326.01
Ford Mustang (5-speed)158.0156.724.45
Source: NIJ TAP Alert, October 1988, NCJ 113947, Table 6. Ergonomics scores are totals over an unestablished number of attributes, and this is now settled as far as the documents allow. The federal results bulletins say 29 — in the same sentence, with the same three examples, from one bulletin to the next. Six of them have been read for this note: the NIJ TAP bulletin of September 1994 and the NIJ/NLECTC bulletins of October 1996, October 1997, October 1999, December 2002 and January 2004, for model years 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2004. Not one prints the attribute list, so the figure cannot be checked against anything. The full reports, which do print the table, count 28 scored rows — counted directly in 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2005 (the October 1993 bulletin for the 1994 test says 29 beside a book that prints 28), and in the 2005 report eight of the ten columns sum exactly to their printed totals (the two Tahoe PPV columns add up to 211.90 against a printed 210.40). The 1987 results table (NIJ TAP Alert, October 1986) and the full 1992 report both print 29 rows: 26 graded by officers and three communications items, scored in 1992 by the police car preparation section. The 1990 book prints 29 too (26 and three), and the count went from 29 to 28 somewhere between the 1992 and 1994 books. A number repeated in boilerplate from one bulletin to the next is not a reading of any year’s table, so no bulletin’s 29 is quoted here — including this year’s own, NCJ 113947, which has now been read and says it too; so do the November 1990 and October 1993 bulletins, making nine bulletins from October 1988 to January 2004 with one sentence between them; one car per body size was scored.
Car / bodyErgonomics (pts)
Dodge Diplomat190.20
Plymouth Gran Fury190.20
Chevrolet Caprice189.60
Ford Crown Victoria168.53
Ford Mustang144.40

The Diplomat and Gran Fury ergonomics totals are identical as printed — shared body, as ever — and the aging M-bodies took the best ergonomics scores of the year.

See the original page: Table 6 in the bulletin
Scan of Table 6 from the October 1988 TAP Alert: ergonomics and communications scores for five cars
Table 6, “Results of Ergonomics and Communications”. The Caprice’s score, 189.60, is partly damaged in this scan. National Institute of Justice, Technology Assessment Program, TAP Alert, October 1988, NCJ 113947, PDF page 5 of the file. Open full size.
Source: Table 7 of the bulletin. The bulletin contradicts itself on what these figures are: the table is headed “Combined city/highway EPA miles per gallon”, while the methodology two paragraphs earlier says the vehicles are “scored based on estimates for city fuel economy to the nearest 1/10th mile per gallon”. The values themselves — 14.3 for a 350 V8 Caprice — read as city figures. Printed here as the table heads them, with the disagreement recorded rather than resolved.
CarEPA combined (mpg)
Chevrolet Caprice (V6)19.0
Ford Crown Victoria 5.0L-PFI17.4
Chevrolet Caprice 5.0L-TBI17.2
Ford Mustang (5-speed)16.9
Ford Mustang (automatic)16.8
Chevrolet Caprice 5.7L-TBI14.3
Dodge Diplomat 5.2L-2BBL14.2
Plymouth Gran Fury 5.2L-2BBL14.2
Ford Crown Victoria 5.8L-VV H.O.13.1
Dodge Diplomat 5.2L-4BBL12.7
Plymouth Gran Fury 5.2L-4BBL12.7
See the original page: Table 7 in the bulletin
Scan of Table 7 from the October 1988 TAP Alert: EPA fuel economy for eleven cars
Table 7, “Fuel Economy”, headed “Combined city/highway EPA miles per gallon”. National Institute of Justice, Technology Assessment Program, TAP Alert, October 1988, NCJ 113947, PDF page 5 of the file. Open full size.

What the bulletin doesn’t hold

This TAP Alert carried preliminary results only: the per-lap dynamics tables, the quarter-mile times, the final weighted scoring, the year’s winner, the bid prices, and the hardware specifications all belong to the full report published that November, which has not been found online. Those numbers will be added to this page from an original copy of the 1989 book; as far as I can tell, they are not available anywhere else online.

What 1989 settled

The moment GM’s fuel injection reached the 350, the sedan record book was rewritten in one September: the first U.S.-specification sedan in these books under ten seconds to 60 since 1978, and a lap average no four-door had approached. Every sedan benchmark the Caprice would carry into its legendary early-nineties form starts here.

And the M-bodies went out sprinting. In their last Michigan test in the books held here (the 1990 book has no Chrysler product), the carbureted Diplomat and Gran Fury cleared a bar that tripped two injected rivals, and ran 119.1 and 120.2 mph. The old guard didn’t fade; it was simply out-teched.

Watch: the M-bodies’ last fast years close out the Diplomat’s run through these tests. The 138-mph Mustangs are the heart of the Mustang SSP video.

Source. National Institute of Justice, Technology Assessment Program Alert, October 1988: Michigan State Police Test 1989 Patrol Vehicles — the official preliminary bulletin of the September 1988 test. All figures transcribed directly from the bulletin. Read the official record at the DOJ virtual library, and see how these videos are researched.