DoubleClutch.ca Magazine’s 2022 Truck of the Year was the Ford Maverick. Blasphemy I say! How does a diminutive front-drive based, hybrid powered, unibody constructed glorified crossover with a cargo bed take home the hardware? Spending a week with the 2023 Ford Maverick Lariat SuperCrew would allow me the chance to find out for myself.
At first glance my Maverick test subject makes a good visual impression with its fancy Cyber Orange Tri-Coat Metallic paint and black appearance package. The black headlamps and taillamps, Ford logos and 18-inch ebony aluminum wheels are a good contrast to the bright paint job to give a more serious tone to our life sized Tonka truck. Walking up close to the Maverick and taking in the dimensions in person, I get my first idea of why these trucks are so popular. It’s one of the smallest pickups out there and removes any sort of intimidation factor one might have about driving a truck.
Getting into the Maverick is no different from your average compact crossover with no need for grab handles or running boards. The interior is mostly made up of a navy-blue plastic, embossed with a fabric like texture that elevates the overall look and feel. Ergonomics and visibility are SUV like, with plenty of room in the back seat for full size passengers. This Lariat trim has a nifty power sliding rear window which is great for getting air flowing through the cabin on a hot summer’s day.
My tester is also equipped with the Lariat Lux package – while it certainly doesn’t look lux in here compared to some of the opulent interiors you get in high-end full-size pickups, all the modern amenities are here. There’s an eight-way power driver’s seat and six-way manual passenger seat, both upholstered in a shade of black onyx in Ford’s synthetic Active-X material. Heated seats, heated mirror, heated steering wheel and wiper de-icer have us covered for the colder seasons. And an 8 speaker with subwoofer audio system by Bang & Olufsen cranks out the tunes with some panache.
Loading up the Maverick with some gear uncovers my first minor quibble, as I discover seat belt sensors for every seat in the truck. Some of my gear fools the Maverick into thinking there are passengers there, which covers the 6.5-inch LED instrument cluster with a giant warning message, as well as an incessant chime telling me my tool bag needs to buckle up. Clearing this warning once would have been ok, but it kept coming back every minute and I could not find any way to disable it. I guess my gear either needs to fasten its seatbelt or ride in the cargo bed.
Oh right there’s a cargo bed! It’s genuinely easy to forget that the bed there with how un-truck like the Maverick cabin is. A full 4.5-foot long, 942-liter cargo area capable of hauling a payload of up to 680 kilograms. The Maverick is perfectly cable of hauling motorcycles around or to haul around your latest Facebook marketplace score.
The base powertrain is a 2.5-liter inline four-cylinder hybrid, mated to a front wheel drive CVT. Driving the Maverick is every bit as easy as it sounds; it’s no different that the hoards of compact SUVs with similar drivetrains. 191 combined horsepower and 155 lb-ft. of torque isn’t really anything to write home about, but feels right for this package. A 2.0-liter EcoBoost powertrain is available with all-wheel-drive should you desire a little more oomph, but the hybrid has its obvious fuel economy advantage that we’ll get to a little later.
The steering and brakes are nice and light, and the suspension feels comfortable and well-tuned to absorb the potholes common to urban city life. While the Maverick is easy to place on the road, I never could come to grips with judging the distance in front when parking – for some reason I always left two or three feet in front of the truck; front parking sensors would have been nice. With the Ford Co-Pilot 360 Assist package the Maverick does have rear parking sensors to go with the standard rear view camera, so backing in is a breeze. We also enjoyed the adaptive cruise feature that works even in stop and go traffic, making traffic jams much less stressful.
Perhaps the most un-truck like thing about the Maverick is the incredible fuel economy. With the hybrid powertrain it’s best in class, rated at 5.8L/100km city, 7.1L/100km highway, and 6.4L/100km combined. I managed 5.2L/100km with an even mix of city and highway driving. What really surprised me was the fact that 143 kilometers of out of 388 total were all-electric (and that there was a display to tell me this). With other hybrid systems you have to be conscious about how much accelerator or speed you can use to stay in electric power, but with the Maverick I didn’t have to think about it at all. The other advantage to the hybrid powertrain is its range. With only a 52-liter tank the Maverick is capable of covering kilometers between fill-ups.
Maybe this might just be a “me” thing but I do have another minor quibble and it has to do with the hybrid powertrain. Like other electric powertrains it makes a concert of high-pitched noises, but the Maverick has a frequency that mimics emergency sirens in the distance which had me checking my surroundings for a fire truck or ambulance in vain on more than one occasion.
Starting at $31,100, our tester in Lariat trim adds the Black Appearance Package, Cyber Orange Paint, Lux and Co-Pilot assist packages to ring in at $45,850. While its limited 907 kg towing capacity (up to 1,814 with EcoBoost engine) keeps it from being a viable option for those of us that need their truck to tow, the 2023 Ford Maverick Lariat SuperCrew is an accessible pickup that anyone can use as everyday transportation, cargo bed in tow whenever you need it. It would make for a great road trip vehicle with its easy road manners, excellent fuel economy and room for gear or shopping pickups beyond your typical SUV. It’s easy to see why they in such high demand, and how it earned the nod for our 2022 Truck of the Year.
