Michigan test archive

2025 Michigan State Police Patrol Vehicle Test

A second Michigan test in a row with no sedan of any kind — and the quickest car in the field runs on batteries.

The police vehicles

Gold row: the electric Blazer is quickest to 60 by 0.87 seconds over the next car, quickest to 100 by 2.80 seconds, and has the shortest projected stop. What it does not do is lap: its 1:39.95 is mid-field, four seconds behind the EcoBoost Utility, which took the best lap average of the year, 1:35.97, and the highest top speed at 148 mph.

The Blazer’s dynamics sheet also records its battery. Across each eight-lap run its state of charge fell from 97 percent to between 65 and 67 percent, and its twenty published laps fall within 0.91 of a second of one another. The book gives no reason for its lap position.

The two Silverado police pickups return from the 2023 and 2024 books. The Silverado Z7X carries a two-inch lift which the book notes still retains a pursuit capable rating, and 6-piston Brembo front calipers with 16-inch rotors — yet it recorded 146.6 feet, the second-longest stop by a four-wheeled vehicle in the test. The F-150 needed 151.8 feet, the longest of any four-wheeled vehicle here.

The book repeats the MSP’s purchasing criteria on printed page 5: 60 mph within 9.0 seconds, 80 within 14.9 and 100 within 24.6; 110 mph within 0.92 mile and 120 within 1.70 miles; an average of 25.79 ft/s² across twenty 60-to-0 stops; and all 32 Grattan laps without major component failure. Four of the cars and trucks miss a printed figure, and the book names none of them as failing. The V6 Durango took 9.03 seconds to 60, 15.14 to 80 and 25.14 to 100 (summary, printed page 46). The F-150 averaged 25.50 ft/s² (brake sheet, printed page 64). The two Silverados topped out at 112 mph and never reached 120; the Z7X’s specification page prints a 112 mph manufacturer limit and the Z71’s prints none, and the book does not comment. The F-150’s and the V6 Durango’s rows are muted in the table. Every other car clears every criterion for which the book prints a figure; the distance to 110 mph is not printed for any of them.

And the Tahoes keep the brakes they gained in 2021. After three consecutive books, 2018 to 2020, among the worst-stopping vehicles in the test, the new-generation Tahoe stopped in 127.4 and 127.1 feet in the 2021 book. Here the rear-drive car recorded 29.83 ft/s² and 129.8 feet — second only to the Blazer, 12.7 feet better than its 2020 figure, and 2.4 feet longer than in 2021.

One brake sheet is incomplete. The 3.3-litre Utility’s records nineteen stops, with Phase II stop 3 left blank (printed page 63). Its printed overall rate, 27.98 ft/s², equals the nineteen stops’ total divided by twenty; the nineteen stops average 29.45. The table gives the printed 27.98 and 138.4 feet.

See the original pages in the 2025 book: lap times and acceleration

The motorcycles

Only three machines ran, equal to the smallest motorcycle field since they were introduced in 2007 (the 2021 and 2024 books have no motorcycle section at all). The preface says “two motorcycles” but lists three, and all three have data. The Yamaha, whose 147 mph of 2020 is still the highest motorcycle top speed in these books, last ran in 2022. The Road Glide is new, and it is the odd one of the pair: slower to 60 than the Electra Glide but nearly two seconds quicker to 100, and reaching the same 110 mph limiter in 0.86 of a mile against the Electra Glide’s 6.45.

Ergonomics and communications

Gold row: the Durango has the highest score on both sheets. The Tahoe, first on ergonomics in the 2021, 2022 and 2024 books, is fourth of six here. The Blazer is last on ergonomics, with the lowest single mark on the sheet, 6.00 for rear-seat legroom.

See the original pages in the 2025 book: ergonomics

Fuel economy — and a column that no longer fits

See the original page in the 2025 book: fuel economy

The manufacturer’s own printed ceiling

Every vehicle on this page had a speed limiter fitted, unless the book notes otherwise. The report states it for the whole field on printed page 4: “All vehicles listed in this report were equipped with electronic speed limiters unless otherwise noted.” Unlike the 2015 and 2018 to 2020 books, the sentence no longer excepts the motorcycles.

And the specification pages carry a field of their own — Manufacturer Limited Top Speed — printed in the powertrain block beside the engine and the transmission. The 2021 book printed it for three of its ten vehicles, the 2022 and 2023 books for every vehicle, and the 2024 book for nine of twelve; here it appears for ten of fourteen. It is the manufacturer’s declared ceiling, published as a specification.

Seven of the ten stopped exactly on their printed limit. For those seven the measured top speed is the limiter’s setting, as it was for most vehicles in the 2022 and 2023 books. In the books held here the limiter story begins with two governed Caprices in 1992; here the manufacturer’s number is printed as a specification and the measurement agrees with it to the mile per hour for seven of ten.

Two were measured one mile an hour above their own limit — the BMW at 137 against 136, the F-150 at 121 against 120 — and the 3.6-litre Durango fell three short of its 130. The book does not comment on any of the three. The book measures top speed on a single run after the fourth acceleration run (printed pages 37 and 78).

In the books that print the weights, the fuel column was worth five points out of a hundred from the 1990s (the 1994 book is the earliest held that weights it at five; the books from 1984 to 1992 give it ten, and the earlier ones twenty-five), and for most of that time the spread between best and worst was a few miles per gallon. Since the 2022 Mach-E the fuel table has contained an entry measured in kilowatt-hours per hundred miles alongside vehicles returning 14 mpg. The two are not comparable in the arithmetic of the books that printed it, and this book prints no scoring.