Michigan test archive
2020 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test
A Yamaha breaks a nine-year-old record, two BMWs lift their rear wheels two and a half feet under braking, and Dodge brings next year’s cars.
Thirteen vehicles and six motorcycles. The field is now entirely sport utilities, Chargers, one pickup and one hybrid sedan — there is no conventional police saloon from any manufacturer except the Charger, and Chevrolet’s whole entry is two Tahoes for the third year running. Dodge brought 2021 model year Chargers alongside its 2020 cars, testing next year’s vehicles a season early, as Ford had done with the 2003 Police Interceptor and as Michigan did with the 2014.5 mid-year models.
The year’s records all belong to a motorcycle. The Yamaha FJR1300P-AB reached 60 mph in 3.67 seconds, 100 mph in 8.19, and ran 147 mph. All three are archive bests — and the 8.19-second run to 100 finally displaces the 2011 Kawasaki’s 8.29, which had stood for nine years.
Among the cars, the 3.0-litre EcoBoost Police Interceptor Utility was quickest again at 5.43 seconds to 60 and 13.99 to 100, running 148 mph. A sport utility has now been the quickest vehicle in the Michigan test two years running, though both HEMI Chargers ran a mile an hour faster on top speed.
And Michigan repeated a warning from the previous book, with a worse number attached. Both BMW GS-P machines again lifted their rear tyres off the road on the majority of brake applications — but where 2019 recorded a lift of eight to twelve inches, this year it was twenty-four to thirty.
The police category
| Vehicle | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | Top speed at | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ford PI Utility EcoBoost AWD 3.0L | 5.43 | 13.99 | 148 | 1.96 mi | 1:36.52 | 29.71 | 130.3 |
| Dodge Charger 5.7L AWD | 5.81 | 14.53 | 149 | 1.34 mi | 1:36.31 | 30.15 | 128.4 |
| 2021 Dodge Charger 5.7L RWD | 6.06 | 14.04 | 149 | 1.40 mi | 1:36.77 | 30.01 | 129.0 |
| Ford F-150 Police Responder EcoBoost 3.5L | 6.69 | 16.66 | 105 | 0.37 mi | 1:44.24 | 26.54 | 145.9 |
| Ford PI Utility Hybrid AWD | 7.20 | 17.62 | 136 | 1.20 mi | 1:39.34 | 29.76 | 130.1 |
| 2021 Dodge Charger 3.6L AWD | 7.23 | 18.39 | 140 | 2.21 mi | 1:37.75 | 30.43 | 127.2 |
| Dodge Durango 5.7L AWD | 7.44 | 20.36 | 118 | 0.71 mi | 1:42.57 | 29.98 | 129.2 |
| Dodge Charger 3.6L RWD | 7.70 | 19.42 | 141 | 1.50 mi | 1:37.95 | 30.42 | 127.3 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L RWD | 7.81 | 19.29 | 134 | 1.53 mi | 1:40.13 | 27.18 | 142.5 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L 4WD | 7.94 | 19.98 | 120 | 0.73 mi | 1:40.36 | 26.71 | 145.0 |
| Ford PI Utility AWD 3.3L | 8.10 | 19.74 | 136 | 1.68 mi | 1:39.60 | 29.45 | 131.5 |
| Dodge Durango 3.6L AWD | 8.59 | 22.68 | 117 | 1.10 mi | 1:45.14 | 29.44 | 131.5 |
| Ford Police Responder Hybrid Sedan | 9.06 | 27.91 | 117 | 1.90 mi | 1:45.72 | 29.69 | 130.4 |
Gold row: quickest to 60 and to 100 for the second consecutive year, from a sport utility. The AWD HEMI Charger took the fastest lap at 1:36.31, two tenths ahead of it.
The hybrid Utility keeps quietly making its case. It reached 100 mph in 17.62 seconds and lapped in 1:39.34 — quicker than the petrol 3.3-litre version of the same vehicle — while returning 23 mpg city against the 3.3’s 17. On the road course and at the pumps, the hybrid is now the better patrol vehicle of the two.
Braking divides the field into two clean groups. Every Dodge and every Ford Utility sits between 127.2 and 131.5 feet. The two Tahoes and the F-150 need 142.5, 145.0 and 145.9 — an eleven-foot gap to the rest of the field, and the third consecutive year the Tahoes have been among the worst-stopping vehicles in the test — though the F-150 needs more still.
The motorcycles
| Machine | 0–60 (s) | 0–100 (s) | Top speed | Top speed at | Dynamics | Brakes (ft/s²) | 60–0 (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yamaha FJR1300P-AB | 3.67 | 8.19 | 147 | 3.01 mi | 1:38.06 | 26.92 | 143.8 |
| BMW R 1250 RT-P | 3.88 | 8.84 | 137 | 2.27 mi | 1:36.95 | 30.41 | 127.3 |
| BMW F 850 GS-P ‡ | 4.56 | 13.85 | 120.1 | 1.60 mi | 1:38.14 | 29.37 | 131.8 |
| BMW F 750 GS-P ‡ | 4.72 | 15.34 | 116.2 | 1.78 mi | 1:39.84 | 29.38 | 131.8 |
| Harley-Davidson FLHP | 5.17 | 18.04 | 109.2 | 0.67 mi | 1:49.80 | 27.74 | 139.6 |
| Harley-Davidson FLHTP | 5.30 | 20.05 | 108.3 | 0.79 mi | 1:49.82 | 28.22 | 137.2 |
Gold row: three archive records in one machine. 3.67 seconds to 60 mph and 147 mph both improve on the Yamaha’s own 2019 figures, and 8.19 seconds to 100 mph finally beats the 2011 Kawasaki’s 8.29 — a mark that had survived nine years and every motorcycle Michigan tested in between. The Yamaha needed three miles to find its top speed; the BMW, two and a quarter, and it took the faster lap.
‡ The braking figures for the two GS-P machines carry the same warning as in 2019, and a larger number. The rear tyre lifted twenty-four to thirty inches on the majority of brake applications — two and a half feet — forcing the rider to modulate pressure rather than make a true panic stop, and on several occasions to release the front brake entirely because the machine was no longer stable. Their published rates are what the procedure produced, not what the motorcycles could do.
Fuel economy
| Vehicle | City | Highway | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ford Police Responder Hybrid Sedan | 40 | 36 | 38 |
| Ford PI Utility Hybrid AWD | 23 | 24 | 24 |
| 2021 Dodge Charger 3.6L AWD | 18 | 27 | 21 |
| Dodge Durango 3.6L AWD | 18 | 25 | 21 |
| Dodge Charger 3.6L RWD | 18 | 26 | 20 |
| Ford PI Utility 3.0L EcoBoost AWD / 3.3L AWD | 17 | 22 / 23 | 19 |
| 2021 Dodge Charger 5.7L RWD | 16 | 25 | 19 |
| Ford F-150 Police Responder 3.5L EcoBoost | 16 | 22 | 18 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L RWD | 15 | 22 | 18 |
| Dodge Charger 5.7L AWD | 15 | 23 | 18 |
| Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L 4WD / Dodge Durango 5.7L AWD | 14 | 20 / 22 | 16 / 17 |
The hybrid Utility’s 23 mpg city and 24 combined is the best figure any sport utility has recorded in this archive — and it belongs to a vehicle that lapped Grattan quicker than its petrol equivalent and ran 136 mph. The economy argument and the performance argument had finally stopped pointing in opposite directions.
What 2020 settled
The hybrid stopped being a compromise. For two years the Police Responder Hybrid Sedan had made the fuel case alone, at the cost of being the slowest thing in the test. In 2020 the hybrid Utility reached 100 mph in 17.62 seconds, ran 136 mph, stopped in 130 feet, lapped quicker than the petrol version of the same truck, and returned five more miles per gallon in the city than anything else on four wheels bar the sedan. Nothing was given up.
And the fastest vehicle Michigan measured, for the second year running, had a tailgate. The programme that spent the 1980s arguing about whether a Mustang belonged in a police test, and the 1990s printing warning labels on sport utilities, now recorded its quickest 0–60 and its highest top speed from the same body style it had once refused to lap.