Ford aims to create new pickup fans with the new roomy hybrid 2022 Maverick

Ford bet big on its ability to change Americans’ driving habits with the 2022 Maverick compact pickup Tuesday. Attractively priced, with a 40-mpg hybrid starting at $19,995 and going on sale this fall, the Maverick is intended to get a whole new class of customers into pickups, marketing boss Trevor Scott told me in an interview.

“We fully expect to put the Maverick on the map with customers who haven’t previously considered pickups,” Scott said. “We expect a large number of first-time pickup buyers” who previously drove small sedans and SUVs, Scott said. “Our target customers have had to compromise fuel efficiency versus cargo or passenger space.”

The Maverick’s 100.3 cubic feet of passenger space is considerably more than Ford’s discontinued Fiesta and Focus small cars, and nearly as much as the defunct midsize Fusion sedan, which cost thousands of dollars more than the Maverick’s base price. Its 54.4-inch long bed dwarfs those cars’ cargo capacity, while a fold-up rear seat offers big-box space protected from the elements and pilferage.

2022 Maverick highlights

Four-door, five-passenger cabin, with plenty of storage

191-horsepower hybrid base model rated 40-mpg in EPA city driving tests

Optional 250-hp model

Front- or all-wheel drive

54.4-inch long bed

Standard automatic high beams

Standard automatic emergency front braking

2,000- or 4,000-pound towing capacity, depending on FWD or AWD drivetrain

1,500-pound payload

What could go wrong? Ask Subaru

Despite the Maverick’s appealing price and features, skepticism is merited, if not mandatory. Without getting too deep in the engineering weeds, previous small pickups built on car-type chassis like the Maverick uses have consistently flopped in the U.S. Pickups are fabulously popular and profitable here, but buyers spurned little trucks that strayed from the body-on-frame construction of Ford’s Ranger midsize and F-series full-size pickups.

The history of failure includes the Subaru Brat in the 1970s, VW Rabbit pickup in the ’80s and Subaru’s second bite of the apple with the Baja in the 2000s. Even the Honda Ridgeline, bigger and better equipped than that trio and backed by Honda’s enviable reputation, has sold slowly here, with just 32,168 sales in 2020 and 33,334 in pre-pandemic 2019.

Ford expects to sell considerably more Mavericks than that. The compact pickup is one of the “white space” vehicles the automaker counts on to offset sales lost when it dropped the Fiesta, Focus and Fusion.

“Who better than Ford, with our credibility and heritage building pickups” to convince new customers to try a truck, Scott asked.

More: Ford Maverick faces challenges, potential big payoff

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Standard safety and assist features include:

• Auto high beams
• Automatic headlights
• Pedestrian detection and braking
• Front collision alert and braking

Optional safety and assist features include:

• Adaptive cruise control
• Evasive steering assist
• Lane centering
• Reverse sensing
• Blind spot and cross-traffic alert
• Lane departure alert and assist
• Hill descent control

Developed fast, with an eye on buyers’ budgets

Ford engineers took nearly two years out of the company’s usual timeline developing the Maverick, keeping an eye on costs the whole time.

The interior is thrifty, with what Ford calls “speckled” plastic surfaces rather than cushioned materials on the dash and door.

The seats are cloth or vinyl — no option for leather — and the 8-inch touch screen is small by the standards of new vehicles. Ford created new shorter inner door handles to make more room for bottles, laptops and the like in storage pockets. It remains to be seen whether those decisions led to less comfortable grips to pull the door closed or surfaces to rest your arm.