Part of a campaign that promotes safe driving, providing a safe alternative to illegal street racing, certain police departments in the United States have been going drag racing.
A couple of months ago, we saw a Colorado State Patrol police cruiser take on the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and SRT Hellcat Redeye, at the Bandimere Speedway in Colorado, with absolutely no chance of winning.
More recently, it was the Jefferson County Sherriff’s turn to go drag racing, at the same strip, with a Ford Explorer.
The black and white vehicle, equipped with a big bulbar up front and emergency lights and siren, as well as other gear inside, lined up at the start line next to a Nissan GT-R.
Depending on when it came to life, the Japanese supercar, has from 480 up to 710 HP available via the right pedal, so surely a Ford Explorer cannot possibly beat it, right?
Well, I won’t spoil the result of the drag race shared at the bottom of the page, but we will tell you that one of the vehicles basically got destroyed.
Now, since drag racing a police cruiser is probably on the bucket list of any petrolhead who’s into this kind of stuff, the SUV didn’t leave after trying its luck against the Godzilla. As a matter of fact, shortly after, it also went head to head with a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500.
The previous generation muscle car was pretty much built for the drag strip, and its 662 HP produced by the 5.8-liter supercharged V8 allowed it to keep pushing all the way up to 202 mph (325 kph).
After warming up the rear tires, the Shelby GT500 lined up at the start line next to the Explorer police cruiser, and when the lights turned green, it took off like a bat out of hell.
After a series of unfortunate events put an end to Cristian's dream of entering a custom built & tuned old-school Dacia into a rally competition, he moved on to drive press cars and write for a living. He's worked for several automotive online journals and now he's back at autoevolution after his first tour in the mid-2000s. Full profile
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