In inter-vehicle communication systems based on dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), frame detection is essential for the correct demodulation of a received frame. Owing to the fast mobility of vehicles and the relatively high radio frequency carrying DSRC signals, the frame detection reliability suffers from low signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and time-varying noise and interference. To address this issue, this study proposed a new detection method to improve the reliability of DSRC receivers in highly dynamic outdoor environments. Specifically, a novel detection metric based on autocorrelation was first proposed to achieve a low and stable probability of false alarm (PFA). Then, the oversampling technique was employed to improve the detection probability (PD) in low-SINR regimes. Finally, a reference design was also presented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for the proposed scheme. Simulation results demonstrated that both low PFA and high PD can be achieved simultaneously in vehicular communications by using the proposed method. Results given by the hardware implementation based on FPGA agree that the feasibility and complexity of our method is acceptable.