One key surprise? That the Ford Maverick looks … good. Not that we figured Ford would churn out something ugly, mind you, but given the truck’s carlike unibody construction and the low bar set by the only other similarly constructed truck sold in America, the heretofore lame-looking but now truckier Honda Ridgeline, we supposed the Ford might resemble a miniature Chevy El Camino or something. A Ford Focus with a pickup bed. Plot twist—it looks like an actual truck!
From only this front angle, the Maverick hides its car-based roots well. The bed is integral with the cab—a key giveaway that this little rig doesn’t have a separate body and frame—but otherwise the squared-off body is upright, and sits rather high off the ground. We like the sort of chubby-baby Ford pickup face, with its big, wide-eyed headlights and simple grille; ditto the blistered fender flares. There are some new Bronco and Bronco Sport SUV bits in the look, along with standard Ford truck styling cues everywhere else. And someone at Ford deserves a design medal for keeping the Ford badge up front normally sized, a subtle manipulation of scale that fairly well hides how compact the Maverick is. A bigger badge, like those on Ford’s full-size F-150, would have cartoonishly given away the Maverick’s size and looked silly.
Underneath its adorable body, the Maverick is expected to use Ford’s compact-car platform, the same one that sits beneath the Focus no longer sold in the U.S. Expect four-cylinder power, at least optionally; Ford might decide to install the same turbocharged three-cylinder used in the compact Bronco Sport and Escape SUVs in an entry-level Maverick. Front- and all-wheel drive are also on the table. We’ll know more closer to the Maverick’s expected reveal later this year. The camouflaged, doorless truck pictured here appears to be an early preproduction build, one likely destined for development and testing duty.
