Ford Maverick - Review, Specs, Pricing, Features, Videos and More

The 2023 Ford Maverick Tremor is a conundrum.

Ford’s baby pickup has been a critical darling since it launched two years ago. Here’s a pint-sized truck that can still handle most of the truck-like things folks need, at a more manageable size—and price. The Maverick’s low starting price and standard hybrid powertrain was cause for celebration. The hybrid was so popular, in fact, that Ford recently made it the extra-cost powertrain.

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The 2022 Ford Maverick is what happens when a manufacturer plays to its strengths.

For decades, American automakers couldn’t catch a break in the compact car segment. The Japanese brands, and more recently the Koreans, cracked the code, achieving success both commercial and critical. Ford found some of the latter with the last Focus and Fiesta, but it wasn’t enough. Both disappeared from the lineup by the beginning of this decade.

Now Ford has flipped the script. The maker of America’s best-selling vehicle since the ’70s has given up the fruitless pursuit of compact car success. Instead, the Blue Oval has done what it does best: build a pickup. The Maverick is the smallest of its kind, but with the standard hybrid drivetrain, it’s one of the best vehicles you can buy for around $30,000 ($36,000 CAD). The Maverick is fun, friendly, and affordable and in high demand, which is something rarely said about compact cars.

The Maverick debuted last summer, before going on sale in October 2021. The friendly-faced trucklet rides on top of the same C2 platform as the Bronco Sport and Escape. That means it sits alongside the larger Hyundai Santa Cruz and Honda Ridgeline as a unibody pickup. What that sacrifices in outright towing capability, it makes up for with better on-road manners.

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These two baby pickup trucks aren’t comparable.

Yes, we mean it: the 2022 Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz both target two very different parts of the market. Yet it’s the comparison so many are clamoring for. The paucity of small pickups prior to these two, and their proximity in launch timing, has forced them together in our collective consciousness, like Armageddon and Deep Impact. Just instead of questionable-quality disaster films, we have two unibody trucklets.

The Maverick is for those who miss the times a work truck was just that, but decry the gargantuan proportions of modern half-tons. Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz is funkier, more a product of the modern, lifestyle-focused times. Make the comparison to the cult classic Subaru Baja, and even Hyundai spokespeople nod in agreement.

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With the Maverick, Ford’s decision to stop building cars makes a lot more sense.

Oh, how many of us questioned the move years ago? I’ll admit it, I was one of them. Sure, crossovers were already well on their way to sales dominance. But how would Ford lure people into dealerships without any affordable compacts? The EcoSport? Ew.

The answer should’ve been obvious. This is Ford, the company that has produced the best-selling vehicle in North America for decades. And it’s a truck. The Maverick shrinks the formula down, a back-to-basics small truck that offers a very tantalizing package for significantly less than the average new car transaction price.

Ford has spun the Maverick off its C2 platform, a versatile unibody setup found under the Escape and Bronco Sport. The wheelbase is longer—some 14 inches longer, because truck—and there’s a 4.5-foot bed slung out back. Front-wheel drive is standard, with a hybrid powertrain no less. That’s not what we have here, though.

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Back in 2006, in the span of two months, Hollywood released two movies centered on magicians: The Illusionist and The Prestige.

Sometimes these things happen; two parties will come to a similar on-paper conclusion to the same issue, completely separately. Ford and Hyundai know what I’m talking about: both revealed their compact pickups, the Maverick and Santa Cruz, within two months of each other, too.

Here’s the catch, though: just as both of those movies turned out to be quite different, so are these baby trucks. They target two niches of the same segment, and depending on your needs, one may be a smarter bet than the other.

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