LA Design Challenge, Highway Patrol

His view was straight line speed didn’t matter in a car chase as even quite normal cars can get pretty fast, what matters is high speed driving skill and experience, and the counter-intuitiveness of high speed handling:

Most Americans believe they are above-average drivers who can handle a car moving at 100+ mph. Most of them are wrong. There is considerable skill involved here, and few people have the opportunity to learn it experientially. Emergency vehicle operations training includes several counter-intuitive aspects, such as staying off of the brake when an obstacle appears directly and immediately in your path (you’re usually better off to try and steer around it).

There is also something to be said for the way the vehicle is configured. Many pickup trucks will exceed 100 mph on the highway if pushed, but they have a high center of gravity and are prone to rollovers on tight, high-speed turns.

In this light the Mercedes and Honda drone entries are no-no’s.

I can tell you first hand that a well maintained BMW M3 can outrun the police, and I think he is almost spot-on - while most cars can go fast these days, it has to be a vehicle that can go fast quickly and easily then it’s all about the driver, his willingness for risk and how well the vehicle can handle [secondarily, knowing your surroundings & traffic patterns, the time of day or night and the size of the police force in a given area helps as well].