Ford Vehicle

DETROIT — The sporty Dodge Charger you see on the roadside — or in your rearview mirror — may in fact be a police cruiser, thanks to a push by Chrysler Llc. to market the model to law-enforcement agencies. Michigan State Police praise “Law enforcement has always liked good performance in a vehicle,” said Lt. David Halliday, leader of the Michigan State Police’s annual police-vehicle tests, which serve as a national standard for law enforcement.

The department recently tested the 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 Charger. Halliday said his testing team doesn’t assign scores to the vehicles or declare winners. But he did say that the Charger led the pack in several categories: Road-race times on a two-mile course. Top speed: 148 mph. Zero to 60 mph: 6.24 seconds. Zero to 100 mph: 15.2 seconds. Challenging Ford, Chevy The Dodge Charger is challenging the Ford Crown Victoria as chief of police cars.

Chrysler’s full-sized model, which debuted in 2006, is no immediate threat to the Crown Vic or the Chevrolet Impala, the market’s other major player, but the Charger is gaining momentum in a market that sells 75,000 vehicles a year as national tests cite its speed and handling. Automakers don’t break out data for law-enforcement sales. Total full-sized Charger sales were 97,833, up 1.5 percent for the first 10 months of 2007 compared with a year earlier.

Crown Victoria sales were 51,286, down 7.2 percent. Impala total sales were 270,504, up 12.6 percent, according to Autodata Corp. John Felice, Ford Motor Co.’s director of North American fleet operations, said Ford predicts flat sales this year for police cars and controls about 80 percent of the market. An important sliver of sales It’s a small dent in the automotive industry, which expects to sell about 16 million cars in the U.S. this year.