Turns out that police pursuit pickups are really quite quick

By Gary S. Vasilash

According to test data from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the 2021 Ford F-150 Police Responder has the best acceleration of any pursuit-rated police vehicle tested.

The tests show that the vehicle does a quarter mile in 14.4 seconds. That 0.4 is important because that is how much faster it is than its closest competitor.

The Michigan State Police are also running tests on the pickup. So far it has measured a 0 to 60 mph time of 5.4 seconds. Again, number-two is 0.4 seconds slower.

However, they’ve found the F-150 going from 0 to 100 mph in 13.1 seconds, which is 0.8 seconds faster than the runner up.

The top speed? The Michigan State Police say 120 mph, which is 15 mph faster than the 2020 model of the truck.

A big contributor to the performance?

A new torque-on-demand 4×4 transfer case.

This is the case because it gets the torque to the wheels faster.

It is also beneficial when cornering.

Both police departments run 32-lap vehicle dynamics test.

The improvements in cornering capability resulted in a 5.8-second reduction in the average lap time in Michigan and a 3.6-second reduction in LA.

No, it’s not that the LA cops are slower drivers than those in Michigan: They put 400 additional pounds of payload into the trucks during testing to simulate cargo.