Another day, another blog claiming that the new Ford Maverick is “compact,” after, earlier this week, another blog called it “tiny,” even though it is neither of those things. Stop saying this!
You may remember a time in this country when you could buy a new truck that wasn’t over 16 feet long. I’m speaking, of course, of the 1990s, when you could buy a first-generation Ford Ranger that was just 176.5 inches long, or a first-generation Chevy S-10 that was 178.2 inches long. Both of those were almost two-feet shorter than the new Maverick, which is 199.7 inches long.
The Maverick is also only 11 inches shorter than the modern Ford Ranger, which is a midsize truck, which is what the Maverick is, too. What the Maverick is not: a compact truck, as Ford calls it, and Ford should know better because Ford used to actually make a compact truck.
You might be thinking that modern safety equipment means that trucks must be big or something, but we know that is hogwash, because Chevy is able to fit all of the required safety stuff in a Spark, a car that is 143 inches long. You might also be thinking that trucks must have four doors like the Maverick and not two doors these days, because of “market demand” or something, to which I say I think automakers can do both!
The other day, I was walking and saw a regular cab, eight-foot box fourteenth-generation F-150 and it nearly made me emotional, as that is not a configuration that you see so much anymore. A truck that you never see anymore (because it doesn’t exist) is a compact truck, like Ford and Chevy and Toyota used to make millions of. It pains me to say that the Ford Maverick also ain’t it. As you were!