This is a highly pedantic nitpick, which I’ll qualify in a second, but gasoline can detonate. Under transient high pressure (shock) conditions, gasoline and other petroleum distillates can detonate; I would expect this to be particularly true of gasoline with oxygenate compounds like MTBE or ETBE included in them. There’s an old improvised recipe for using petroleum jelly and an oxydizing compound not to be named as a mild plastique explosive; of course, what isn’t mentioned is that it requires a #8 or more powerful blasting cap and as a brisance and detonation speed comperable to black powder, so…kind of pointless.
However, these kinds of pressures and shock environments are not going to be found in any normal environment, even a massive car pileup at 80mph, and as you note, CHiPs is indeed not a documentary, particularly their motorcycle driving skills (how do they always round corners while staying in line with one another? They must spend hours practicing to do that 
) Exploding cars are Hollywood nonsense.
Stranger