Michigan test archive
2006 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test
The HEMI comes to the police category — and takes the top-speed record the Caprice had held for a decade.
Nine vehicles ran in the police category, five in special service, and two more in a non-published category. The list is dominated by a manufacturer that had been absent from these tables for most of the nineties: Dodge entered four police-category cars — a Charger and a Magnum, each with the 3.5-litre V6 and each with the 5.7-litre HEMI.
The HEMI Charger settled matters immediately. It reached 60 mph in 6.52 seconds, 100 in 16.24, crossed the quarter mile in 15.00 at 95.90 mph, and ran 150 mph. It lapped Grattan in 1:37.96. Those acceleration figures are Camaro territory — the last pursuit Camaro of 2002 managed 5.69 to 60 and 13.48 to 100 — achieved by a four-door sedan with a usable back seat.
And 150 mph is the fastest top speed any police-package sedan has recorded in this archive, in any year. The 1996 Caprice’s 139 had stood for a decade. The Charger beat it by eleven miles an hour, and the Impala — a front-drive Chevrolet with a 3.9-litre V6 — beat it too, at 142.
The Ford Police Interceptor, meanwhile, ran 130 mph with the 3.27 axle and 120 with the 3.55, took eight and a half seconds to 60, and finished behind every Dodge on the road course. It had been the default American police car for six years. On this evidence it was now the slowest thing in its own category that wasn’t a truck.
The police category
| Vehicle | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dodge Charger 5.7L HEMI | 6.52 | 16.24 | 150 | 15.00 @ 95.90 | 1:37.96 | 29.01 | 133.5 |
| Dodge Magnum 5.7L HEMI | 6.55 | 16.49 | 134 | 15.05 @ 95.25 | 1:38.26 | 29.53 | 131.1 |
| Dodge Charger 3.5L | 8.90 | 24.55 | 135 | 16.82 @ 85.23 | 1:41.82 | 29.77 | 130.1 |
| Dodge Magnum 3.5L | 9.14 | 25.71 | 132 | 17.00 @ 84.08 | 1:42.24 | 30.19 | 128.3 |
| Ford Police Interceptor (3.55 axle) | 8.63 | 23.38 | 120 | 16.57 @ 85.45 | 1:41.36 | 27.10 | 142.9 |
| Ford Police Interceptor (3.27 axle) | 8.93 | 24.12 | 130 | 16.73 @ 85.90 | 1:41.65 | 27.05 | 143.2 |
| Chevrolet Impala 9C1 3.9L | 8.83 | 23.58 | 142 | 16.69 @ 87.58 | 1:44.10 | 27.19 | 142.4 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV 2WD (E85) | 8.65 | 25.72 | 124 | 16.61 @ 84.45 | 1:47.01 | 27.11 | 142.8 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV 2WD | 8.69 | 25.68 | 124 | 16.65 @ 84.25 | 1:47.49 | 26.63 | 145.4 |
Gold row: 150 mph — the fastest police-package sedan in this archive, and the first time since the Camaro left that anything with four doors got near the pony cars. Its 15.00-second quarter mile is quicker than every sedan the programme has ever timed.
The braking column is the real upheaval, and it belongs entirely to Dodge. All four Chargers and Magnums stopped in under 134 feet; the Magnum 3.5 needed 128.3, within seven tenths of a foot of the 1993 Camaro’s 127.6, which is the shortest stop in this archive. Every Ford and Chevrolet on the page needed at least 142 feet. That is a fourteen-foot gap between manufacturers, measured on the same day on the same surface.
Note also what the top-speed column now measures. The 3.55-axle Interceptor is limited to 120 mph and the 3.27 car to 130, while a front-drive V6 Impala runs 142 and a 3.5-litre Charger runs 135. The Ford is not slower because it is weaker; it is slower because of where its limiter was set, and the gap between a police car’s capability and its permission had never been wider.
The special-service vehicles
| Vehicle | 0–60 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ford Explorer 4.6L (2WD) ‡ | 8.62 | 97 | 16.75 @ 85.58 | 25.83 | 149.9 |
| Dodge Magnum 3.5L ‡ | 9.07 | 117 | 16.93 @ 84.58 | 27.11 | 142.8 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L (4WD) ‡ | 9.50 | 98 | 17.18 @ 82.73 | 24.79 | 156.2 |
| Ford Expedition 5.4L (2WD) ‡ | 9.77 | 100 | 17.32 @ 81.28 | 25.51 | 149.5 |
The Magnum appears in both categories this year — as a police-package car running 132 mph and stopping in 128.3 feet, and as a special-service car running 117 and stopping in 142.8. Same nameplate, same engine, two different specifications and two very different results, which is the clearest illustration the archive offers of what the package designation actually buys.
Ergonomics, communications and fuel
| Vehicle | Ergonomics & communications | EPA city (mpg) |
|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV | 215.36 | 14.6 / 11.0 on E85 |
| Ford Police Interceptor | 202.65 | 15.6 |
| Chevrolet Impala 9C1 | 193.71 | 18.8 |
| Dodge Magnum | 188.73 | 18.8 (3.5) / 16.9 (5.7) |
| Dodge Charger | 188.00 | 18.8 (3.5) / 16.9 (5.7) |
The Tahoe wins this column again, and the Interceptor holds second by more than eight points — its trunk accessibility scored a perfect 10.00 from the technicians who had to fit equipment into it, the only ten anywhere in the archive. The Chargers finished last of the sedans, with 4.90 for the automatic door lock switch and 5.70 for rear visibility. Fast is not the same as easy to live in.
And read the E85 line carefully. Running on ethanol the Tahoe returned 11.0 mpg city against 14.6 on petrol — a quarter of its range gone. In 2005 the flex-fuel Tahoe had cost about one mile per gallon; the gap here is 3.6.
What 2006 settled
The performance police sedan came back, and it was a Dodge. Chrysler had returned in 2002 with an Intrepid that missed its braking requirement by four hundredths; four years later it brought a HEMI Charger that ran 150 mph, went quicker to 100 than any four-door in the archive, and stopped in 133 feet — with its own V6 stablemates stopping shorter still, one of them within seven tenths of a foot of the programme’s all-time record.
What makes the year matter, though, is what it did to the Ford. The Police Interceptor had won by attrition — it survived the Caprice, the Lumina, the Intrepid and every truck that was never meant to chase anything. In 2006 it was slower to 60 than four cars in its own category, slower around Grattan than all four Dodges, and needed fourteen feet more to stop than any of them. It would stay in production for another five years, and never lead a Michigan table again.