Michigan test archive
2013 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test
Ethanol vanishes from the tables, and a turbocharged Ford takes the fastest lap of the test.
Two things are missing from the 2013 entry list. The first is E85. After eight consecutive years in which Michigan tested flexible-fuel versions of the Tahoe, the Impala, the Caprice and the Police Interceptor alongside their petrol twins, not one E85 vehicle was submitted. The experiment simply stops. Nothing in the book explains it, and nothing replaces it.
The second is the Kawasaki, which had taken three archive records in two years and does not return. Four motorcycles ran instead of six.
What did happen is that Ford’s turbocharged sedan came of age. The EcoBoost Police Interceptor reached 60 mph in 5.75 seconds — a tenth quicker than the 6.0-litre Caprice and a third of a second quicker than the HEMI Charger — ran 150 mph, crossed the quarter mile at 101.54 mph, and lapped Grattan in 1:35.55, the fastest lap of the test. A twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V6 in a front-drive-based saloon was now the quickest and best-handling police car Michigan could find.
And the shortest stop of the year belonged to Ford too. The AWD 3.7-litre Police Interceptor stopped from 60 mph in 128.2 feet, a tenth of a foot better than the 6.0 Caprice. Two years earlier the company’s entry had been a Panther-platform Crown Victoria that ran 119 mph and finished last in almost everything.
The police category
| Vehicle | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ford Police Interceptor EcoBoost AWD 3.5L | 5.75 | 13.77 | 150 | 14.21 @ 101.54 | 1:35.55 | 29.75 | 130.2 |
| Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 6.0L | 6.03 | 14.28 | 154 | 14.52 @ 100.93 | 1:35.94 | 30.17 | 128.3 |
| Dodge Charger 5.7L (3.06 axle) | 6.08 | 14.61 | 149 | 14.65 @ 100.21 | 1:36.05 | 30.13 | 128.5 |
| Dodge Charger 5.7L (2.65 axle) | 6.12 | 14.39 | 152 | 14.56 @ 100.76 | 1:36.02 | 30.00 | 129.1 |
| Chevrolet Impala 9C1 3.6L | 7.22 | 18.29 | 149 | 15.63 @ 92.53 | 1:40.42 | 28.60 | 135.4 |
| Ford Police Interceptor AWD 3.7L ‡ | 7.53 | 18.62 | 132 | 15.77 @ 92.42 | 1:37.71 | 30.20 | 128.2 |
| Ford Police Interceptor FWD 3.5L | 7.62 | 19.04 | 131 | 15.94 @ 92.35 | 1:38.39 | 29.27 | 132.3 |
| Dodge Charger 3.6L (3.07 axle) | 7.70 | 20.05 | 141 | 15.95 @ 90.06 | 1:37.30 | 29.99 | 129.1 |
| Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 3.6L | 7.79 | 19.21 | 146 | 15.98 @ 90.52 | 1:37.74 | 29.48 | 131.3 |
| Dodge Charger 3.6L (2.65 axle) | 7.82 | 19.50 | 141 | 16.02 @ 92.49 | 1:37.09 | 29.91 | 129.4 |
| Ford Police Interceptor AWD 3.5L | 7.86 | 19.64 | 131 | 16.05 @ 91.05 | 1:39.06 | 29.58 | 130.9 |
| Ford Police Interceptor Utility AWD 3.7L | 7.96 | 21.13 | 132 | 16.09 @ 90.22 | 1:40.68 | 29.21 | 132.6 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV 2WD 5.3L | 8.04 | 21.07 | 137 | 16.30 @ 88.58 | 1:42.40 | 29.68 | 130.5 |
Gold row: quickest to 60 and to 100, highest trap speed, and the fastest lap. The EcoBoost gives away four miles an hour of top speed to the Caprice and beats it everywhere else. Its 1:35.55 is the quickest car lap on this page by four tenths.
The braking column is the tightest in the archive’s history: every one of the thirteen vehicles stopped between 128.2 and 135.4 feet, a spread of just 7.2 feet across four manufacturers and three body types. In 1980 the spread between best and worst was over thirty feet. Eleven of the thirteen cars here would have beaten the 1993 Camaro’s long-standing 127.6-foot record within two feet, and the top three all sit under 129.
Note the two Caprices against each other. The 3.6-litre V6 ran 146 mph — eight short of its own V8 sibling and faster than every naturally aspirated Ford in the test — while returning 18 mpg city against the 6.0’s 15. And the Impala, at 7.22 seconds and 149 mph, was quicker than every Ford except the EcoBoost.
Two incidents
The Victory Commander I developed a high-speed wobble on the first and second acceleration runs. The book records it without explaining it: the cause was not established. Its figures are published anyway.
On the car side, the 2.65-axle HEMI Charger began clunking at Grattan. A loose cradle bolt was found and torqued, and the car continued.
The motorcycles
| Machine | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | ¼ mile | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BMW R 1200 RT-P | 4.38 | 10.90 | 128 | 13.04 @ 107.02 | 26.90 | 143.9 |
| Victory Commander I | 5.66 | 18.04 | 115 | 14.47 @ 93.49 | 24.16 | 160.3 |
| Harley-Davidson Road King FLHP | 6.04 | 21.51 | 108 | 14.95 @ 90.78 | 25.70 | 150.7 |
| Harley-Davidson Electra Glide FLHTP | 6.13 | 29.20 | 103 | 14.98 @ 89.59 | 26.85 | 144.2 |
With the Kawasaki gone the BMW has the field to itself again and wins every column bar one — the Electra Glide, slowest of the four by a wide margin, posts the second-best braking figure at 144.2 feet. The Victory Commander I needed 160.3 feet, the longest stop in the test on any number of wheels.
Ergonomics, communications and fuel
| Vehicle | Ergonomics & communications | City mpg |
|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Tahoe PPV | 206.72 | 15 |
| Dodge Charger | 198.67 | 18 (3.6) / 16 (5.7) |
| Ford Police Interceptor Utility | 192.12 | 16 |
| Chevrolet Impala 9C1 | 176.22 | 17 |
| Ford Police Interceptor | 175.02 | 18 (FWD) / 17 (AWD) / 16 (EcoBoost) |
| Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 | 173.14 | 18 (3.6) / 15 (6.0) |
One useful thing happened in this column: the communications scores recovered. In 2012 every vehicle in the test scored between 3.27 and 5.28 for trunk accessibility; here the range is 5.55 to 8.33 and engine-compartment access runs from 4.92 to 7.94. That strongly suggests the 2012 collapse was a change in how the section was scored rather than six vehicles simultaneously becoming impossible to wire — and it is a reason to treat this column as a within-year comparison only.
The Caprice again splits itself in two. It takes 7.90 for rear-seat legroom, the best on the page, and 4.80 for seatbelts and 5.00 for adjustability, the worst — and finishes last overall. The Ford Police Interceptor sedan is second-last at 175.02, with 4.70 for rear-seat entry and exit and 4.40 for rear visibility. Neither of the two quickest cars in the test was a pleasant place to work.
What 2013 settled
Ford’s gamble paid. Two years after the Crown Victoria left these tables as the slowest thing in the test, a twin-turbocharged Police Interceptor took the quickest 0–60, the quickest 0–100, the highest trap speed and the fastest lap of the year — and a naturally aspirated 3.7-litre version of the same car recorded the shortest stop. The company that had spent a decade winning by attrition was now winning on the numbers.
The other finding is quieter and belongs to everyone. Thirteen vehicles stopped within 7.2 feet of each other. Four manufacturers, three body types, V6s and V8s and turbos and a full-size sport utility, and by 2013 they all stopped in about 130 feet. The braking column had been the most brutal discriminator in this archive for thirty years — forty feet between best and worst in 1980, sixteen feet between an ABS and a non-ABS Crown Victoria in 1996. Now it separated almost nothing. Whatever else the industry had failed to standardise, it had standardised stopping.