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Ford Police Cars Are More Competitive than What Chevrolet and Dodge Have to Offer

This may not come as a surprise to you, but the Ford Police Interceptors have been crowned top dog once again. Evaluated by the Michigan State Police and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the 2016 model year Ford Police Interceptors claimed top scores for acceleration, quarter-mile and lap times.
Police Cars 1 photo
Photo: Ford
But first, let’s start with the underdogs of the test. Unfortunately for Dodge, the Charger Pursuit police car goes home with no trophy whatsoever. From General Motors’ point of view, the men and women behind the PPV-grade Chevrolet Caprice, Impala, and Tahoe are popping champagne bottles because these models achieved the highest top speeds in their vehicle segment.

Furthermore, the Tahoe PPV 5.3-liter V8 is more competitive from 0 - 60 mph and 0 - 100 mph than other utility vehicles using base engines.

With the underdogs out of the way, the time has come to report what the Law Enforcement agencies had to say about Ford’s choice of police interceptors. Without further beating around the bush, both the MSP and LASD granted top scores for acceleration and lap times. Under the new testing protocols adopted by the agencies, the Ford Police Interceptor Sedan with the EcoBoost engine and its Police Interceptor Utility sibling managed to beat out their competitors from Chevy and Dodge.

FoMoCo now boasts bragging rights for the quickest-accelerating pursuit vehicle (Police Interceptor Sedan), beating V8-equipped rivals. As an added bonus, the all-wheel drive 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6-powered Police Interceptor Sedan is faster than the all-wheel drive 5.7-liter V8-powered Dodge Charger on the track by less than a second (1:35.66 versus 1:36.12).

The same police car made by the Blue Oval sprints to 60 mph (96 km/h) a tad more quickly than the 6-liter V8-powered Chevrolet Caprice PPV. As you can tell, the differences between the Big Three aren’t huge, but you know that it’s a dog-eat-dog world in Detroit Motor City.

Another bragging right for the Ford Motor Company comes in the guise of the 2-liter EcoBoost-powered Police Interceptor Sedan. Both the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Michigan State Police gave this model a "pursuit rating" because it's quicker to 60 mph than the old Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

Isn’t that like putting a vigorous youngster up against their granddad in a 1/4-mile running contest?
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 Download: Test results of police cars (2015) (PDF)

About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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