There Were Actually Five Ford Mavericks

It feels like the hot segment in the car world right now is, of course, small, cheap trucks. Everyone is talking about them. Even us! You’ve seen all the Slate stuff, of course, and then there’s Ford’s $30,000 EV pickup, and even whatever is going on with those REO people. But I think it’s safe to say that this recent era of affordable truck-madness started with the Ford Maverick in 2022.

So with that in mind, I thought I should address something, something important. It’s becoming more and more likely that a person will, say, drop down through a bunch of acoustical tiles in a drop ceiling, in a cloud of dust and broken bits of tile that resemble massive Saltines. Then, if my math serves, chances are this person will leap upon you with unexpected speed, pinning you to the ground, sweaty hands pressing your elbows to the floor as their face hovers inches above yours, eyes unfocused and wild.

“Tell me all the Mavericks,” the dusty, disheveled person will demand, “all of them.”

Now, for most people, they probably think they can just appease this loon by telling him what they think are all the Mavericks: the original 1970 to 1977 built on the old Falcon chassis, and the modern smallish pickup truck. But I’m here to tell you that won’t be enough. Telling a creep like that just two Mavericks is only going to antagonize them, because the truth is that there were five Mavericks that Ford sold, in various places around the world.

And you should know them all, for safety. So let’s go through each one!

The Original 1970-1977 Maverick

As I mentioned, this one is the OG Maverick was based on the even-old-then 1960 Falcon platform, and was intended to compete with compacts like the Volkswagen Beetle and some of the then-recent Japanese imports, like Toyotas and Datsuns. It was, of course a much bigger, thirstier car than any of those, faster, too, as you could get them with big V8s. It wasn’t really all that small, either. If anything, the Pinto filled the import-fighter role more.

The Mavericks had appealing styling and came in a number of body styles, a coupé and a four-door sedan. Two is a number! Was it just those two bodies? I guess it was. My friend Al had one of these in high school, a baby-vomit green one passed down from his grandmother. His had the inline-6 and a three-speed automatic, and wasn’t fast, but he was the first one of our little group to drive and get a car, so it was a heavenly chariot for us.

Ford liked to pretend the Maverick could be confused with a Mercedes, partially because of the “European-style armrests” whatever the hell that means:

Re-Badged Aussie Nissan Patrol, 1988-1994

The second Maverick Ford sold was an Australian-market car, and was part of a confusing (to me, at least) plan to remove some protections from Australia’s car industry and attempt to make it more efficient, a plan known as the Button Car Plan, which reduced the number of overall car models produced in Australia, and pushed carmakers to do a lot of badge engineering – which is why Ford ended up with a Nissan Patrol called the Maverick.

The Maverick was a fourth-generation Patrol, a good off-roader with a roomy, boxy body, sort of a Toyota Land Cruiser competitor. It’s sometimes said this was the best thing to come out of the Button Car Plan badge-engineering era.

There was also a pickup truck version of this Maverick, which makes it the first Maverick truck. So there, modernity.

The Other Nissan, the Spanish 1993-1999 Nissan Terrano II

Built at Nissan’s Spanish subsidiary, this compact SUV was also called the Mistral for the Japanese market, and was a boxily-appealing body-on-frame SUV, available in two- or four-door body styles. You could get these with a 2.4-liter gas engine or two turbo-diesels, in 2.7 or a 3.0-liter sizes.

These things, under the Terrano II name, lasted until 2005! That’s a pretty good run!

I like the styling of these, with their simple, clean lines and that nice little kick-up in the beltline at the C-pillar. The two-door one is especially fun-looking, as you can see it prancing around in this promo video:

I like the combination of shots of it fording deep muddy streams and also tooling around a quaint European town. What more would you want?

The One That Was Just An Escape (2001-2008)

For some reason, Ford sold the first-generation Escape as the Maverick in Europe and China. Dis those cultures have negative connotations with the idea of escapes, or escaping? Maybe the subtle variation of “escape” as a sort of getaway, a fun break or vacation, didn’t translate well, and escapes were just seen as something desperate one does to escape peril? Is that possible?

The Modern Maverick (2022-    )

We’ve written about these plenty.

So there you go! Now you know the full quintet of Mavericks, and can fend off any bastards that try to trap you by an under-counting of Mavericks! Be careful out there!