Michigan test archive

2018 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test

A hybrid returns 40 mpg, a pickup reaches 60 quicker than most of the sedans, and Chevrolet turns up with nothing but Tahoes.

The police category

See the original pages in the 2018 book: lap times and acceleration

Every car and truck on this page had a speed limiter fitted, unless the book notes otherwise. 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 unless otherwise noted, or with the exception of certain motorcycles.”

The caveat matters. In the 2015 book the sentence is no longer unconditional (the 2014 book is not held): it excepts “certain motorcycles”, so on this page the blanket statement covers the cars, and not necessarily the motorcycles. Which motorcycles, the sentence does not say; the Harley-Davidson highlight pages list speed-limited engine downloads for the FLHP Stage II (about 115 mph) and the FLHTP Stage IV (110 mph).

Gold row: quickest to 60 and 100, highest trap speed and fastest lap. But look at the third row. The F-150 pickup reached 60 mph in 6.29 seconds, one hundredth quicker than the EcoBoost Utility and more than a second quicker than either Tahoe. Its lap average is the slowest of the cars, and its top speed stops at a round 100 — but the acceleration figure is not what a pickup was supposed to produce.

The braking column moved sharply the wrong way this year. In 2017 eleven of thirteen vehicles stopped inside 131 feet; here only one does. The two Tahoes are the worst of it at 146.2 and 147.9 feet, 8.5 and 12.6 feet longer than their own 2017 figures, and the EcoBoost sedan needs 141.8 against 130.7 the year before. The book gives the reason: the brake surface was changed because of construction, and the new one had a coefficient of friction of .87 against .93 on the surface used before, so these stops are not directly comparable with 2017’s.

Measured against the purchasing criteria printed on page 4, the Hybrid reached 60 mph in 9.05 seconds against 9.0 and never reached 120 mph, and the F-150 never reached 110; the book names neither as out.

One number hidden in the per-driver laps deserves an airing. The Ford Special Service Police — the two-litre car — was averaged by its four drivers at 1:42.34, 1:43.54, 1:48.85 and 1:50.76. That is a spread of 8.42 seconds between the quickest and slowest driver on the same vehicle; for every other car in this book it is under two seconds, and as little as 0.71. The book gives no reason.

The motorcycles

Gold row: the Yamaha FJR1300, new to the archive, takes the highest motorcycle top speed recorded here to that point, 143 mph — and needed 40,727 feet, or 7.71 miles, to find it, more than five times the distance any other machine required. It also matched the 2008 BMW’s 4.10 seconds to 60 and reached 100 in 9.81.

Harley-Davidson brought four machines representing a tuning ladder — a standard FLHP, an FLHP Stage II, an FLHTP Stage I and an FLHTP Stage IV — and the ladder is legible in a single column. From standard to Stage IV, 0–100 falls from 19.12 seconds to 12.41. Nearly seven seconds, though the ladder spans two models: the Stage IV is an Electra Glide rather than a Road King, and its kit enlarges the engine from 107 to 114 cubic inches.

And the electric Zero has closed right up: 4.80 seconds to 60, against 6.89 in 2016, and 102 mph against 95. It is now quicker to 60 than two of the four Harleys.

Communications and fuel

The hybrid’s 40 mpg city and 38 combined is not a marginal improvement on anything in this archive; it is a different order of number. The best figure any previous vehicle in these books recorded was the 1984 Dodge Aries four-cylinder’s 25.6 (the 1996 Geo Tracker’s 22 is the best by a sport utility), and the best from a full-size sedan was 20. Against that, it scored 6.74 on communications — the lowest on the page, with 5.67 for engine-compartment access.

See the original pages in the 2018 book: communications and fuel economy