By now, it is public knowledge that Ford is coming out with an affordable compact, front-wheel-drive, unibody pickup truck in the next year or so. The trucklet will sit beneath the mid-size Ranger in Ford’s lineup, and is expected to cost less than $20,000. Its name is a mystery, however. We’ve taken to calling the truck “Courier,” because Ford has used that name on compact pickups globally for decades—including one sold here in the ’70s. But an image of a Ford truck tailgate with “Maverick” lettering leaked to The Fast Lane Truck YouTube channel (and reported on by Motor1.com) throws some intrigue into the compact pickup’s name game.
If the CAD (computer-aided design) drawing provided to TFLT proves legit, it holds other clues beyond the trucklet’s name. In the image, we can see a rather narrow, tall tailgate clearly adorned with an oval indentation in the middle—where a Ford blue oval badge would likely sit—and that “Maverick” lettering in Ford-style font. The general look of the tailgate seems is similar to the one in our rendering of the 2022 Ford compact truck, although the little indents in each upper corner of the piece indicate Ford’s taillight design might extend from the bedsides onto the tailgate itself. What will the rest of the small truck look like? We hear it’ll appear tough, and it will play down its car-based attributes with blocky, Ranger-like styling.
Internet rumormills have speculated for some time now that Maverick could be one of the names Ford is considering for its new truck, and, admittedly, it’s a cooler moniker than “Courier.” Ford last used the Maverick name on a compact car sold in the ’70s, and this author’s father owned a puke-green, four-door model without one of the cool engine options.
We reached out to Ford for comment, and it had none. In the meantime, again, if this CAD drawing is real, it seems Ford has settled on the Maverick name for its new sub-Ranger pickup, which won’t come to market until 2021 at the earliest.
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