Abstract | The sliding response of rigid bodies is investigated under multiple suites of ground-motion records having different inherent characteristics: Ordinary (no-pulse-like, no-long-duration), near field, pulse-like versus spectrally-matched non-pulse-like twins, and long-duration versus spectrally-matched short-duration twins. A basic Coulomb friction model of a rigid block resting freely on a flat surface is used as a testbed, applying incremental dynamic analysis to assess response statistics under the different suites at multiple levels of intensity. Alternative intensity measures are employed, including the peak ground acceleration, the peak ground velocity, and variants of average spectral acceleration—defined as the geometric mean of spectral accelerations over a range of periods. As engineering demand parameters, both the maximum absolute displacement and the absolute residual displacement are employed. The results indicate a non-trivial sensitivity to duration and pulsiveness, and suggest as well that some intensity measures perform considerably better than others in suppressing sensitivity to such peculiar ground-motion characteristics.