Chevy Caprice Takes Arkansas Trooper On Wild Ride

The old girl’s still got it!

Back in the mid-90s, American performance was in a much different place. You might be realizing a return to emaciated American muscle cars, if not an absence of them, seems to be on the horizon right now. But back in the middle of the 90s the Chevy Caprice was a pretty hot car most non-gearheads didn’t expect to be all that fast, as long as you opted for the LT1 V8.

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You might be laughing at that, especially if you weren’t alive or were just a little kid back then, but this video of Arkansas State Police Trooper Jacob Byrd chasing one down on the highway proves the old girl’s still got it. We’d rather see that on display on a track and not with a police pursuit, but this does show the Caprice wasn’t the pushover some assume.

In the beginning, you hear Trooper Byrd say he clocked the suspect’s car going 107 mph in the opposite direction, with its lights shut off, so he swung around and tried to catch up. He did, finding the Chevy sitting at a light with everything switched back on, the suspect probably hoping he could drive away unnoticed.

When it became obvious the trooper recognized the car, the suspect drove through a red light, then pulled to the side of the road. Being smarter than the average trooper, Byrd yelled for the driver to shut off the car. He knows all about the trick of driving off when he’s walking up to a suspect. Instead of doing that, the Caprice takes off and the chase is on.

Despite being almost 30 years old, the Chevy sedan rockets ahead and is able to put some distance between it and Trooper Byrd’s cruiser. Then the driver blacked out to help his car disappear into the night. He might’ve gotten away, but the suspect obviously overestimated his driving skills, pushing the Caprice too hard on an off-ramp and wrecking out. So there might be a ’95 Caprice with the LT1 available on the market before too long, although we think it’ll be a parts car.

As for the driver, he took off on foot but was caught quickly.