Michigan test archive
2013 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test
Ethanol vanishes from the tables, and a turbocharged Ford takes the best lap average 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 — nearly three tenths 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 averaged 1:35.55 a lap at Grattan, the best lap average 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 with the 3.55 axle and 129 with the 3.27.
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 |
See the original pages in the 2013 book: lap times and acceleration
Every vehicle on this page had a speed limiter fitted. The report states it for the whole field in its General Information section, printed page 2: “All vehicles listed in this report were equipped with electronic speed limiters.”
Unqualified, as it is in every document held here from 2003 to 2014 (the 2003, 2004 and 2005 bulletins and the 2005, 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2013 books). No exceptions, no motorcycle clause — every vehicle in the table above had a limiter fitted, so any top speed in it may be a setting rather than what the vehicle could do.
The 3.7-litre Police Interceptor’s acceleration figures are a second run. Michigan records on printed page 2 that during the acceleration runs the car “experienced an overspeed code”, which “could potentially retard spark to the engine causing performance degradation.” Ford engineers cleared it and the car re-ran acceleration and top speed. “Results on the re-run were slightly different from the original acceleration runs. The re-run results are published in this evaluation.”
Compare that with the 2011 Caprice, where Michigan ran a retest and then ruled that “the original times… remain as the official results.” Two retests, two opposite dispositions. Here the second run replaced the first; there it did not. The book does not print the original 2013 figures, so what they were is not recoverable from it.
Gold row: quickest to 60 and to 100, highest trap speed, and the best lap average. The EcoBoost gives away four miles an hour of top speed to the Caprice, and 1.9 feet of braking, and beats it everywhere else. Its 1:35.55 is the best car lap average on this page by four tenths.
The braking column is the tightest of any full field 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 three manufacturers, sedans and sport utilities alike. (The 1985 scoring sheet’s four sedans work out within 6.6 feet of each other from the sheet’s deceleration figures; it prints no stopping distances.) In 1980 the spread between the shortest and longest single stops was over thirty feet, and in 1978 seventy-six; measured the same way, single stops on the 2013 car sheets run from 120.77 to 138.51 feet, a spread of 17.7, under a different procedure. The top three all sit under 129 feet.
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 | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BMW R 1200 RT-P | 4.38 | 10.90 | 128 | 13.04 @ 107.02 | 1:41.11 | 26.90 | 143.9 |
| Victory Commander I | 5.66 | 18.04 | 115 | 14.47 @ 93.49 | 1:50.68 | 24.16 | 160.3 |
| Harley-Davidson Road King FLHP | 6.04 | 21.51 | 108 | 14.95 @ 90.78 | 1:49.21 | 25.70 | 150.7 |
| Harley-Davidson Electra Glide FLHTP | 6.13 | 29.20 | 103 | 14.98 @ 89.59 | 1:49.67 | 26.85 | 144.2 |
With the Kawasaki gone the BMW has the field to itself again and wins every column shown, the lap average by more than eight seconds; the Electra Glide, slowest of the four to 100 mph and on top speed, posts the second-best braking figure at 144.2 feet. The Victory Commander I needed 160.3 feet, the longest projected stop in the book, made at the Precision Driving Unit in Lansing rather than on the cars’ surface.
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) / 18 (AWD 3.7) / 17 (AWD 3.5) / 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. The 2012 book gives no reason for its low marks, and a swing that large in one year 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.
See the original pages in the 2013 book: ergonomics and fuel economy
What 2013 settled
Ford’s gamble paid. Two years after the Crown Victoria left these tables as the slowest car in the test in a straight line, a twin-turbocharged Police Interceptor took the quickest 0–60, the quickest 0–100 and the highest trap speed of any car, 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. Three manufacturers, sedans and sport utilities, V6s and V8s and turbos, and by 2013 they all stopped in about 130 feet. The braking column had been the most brutal discriminator in this archive for more than thirty years — seventy-six feet between the shortest and longest single stops in 1978, thirty-three in 1980 (17.7 in 2013, measured the same way), 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.