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> So Consumer Reports put together 3 of their top hybrids here. The Lexus NX came out a few years ago in the premium luxury segment here. Very nice car, attract

> So Consumer Reports put together 3 of their top hybrids here. The Lexus NX came out a few years ago in the premium luxury segment here. Very nice car, attractive car, good mileage there. The Ford Maverick. Now we actually had this truck. It is a small compact utility pickup truck. Unibody construction, 38 MPG with hybrid. Yeah. What's really surprising about the Ford Maverick rated so highly is not really that it's a brand new vehicle from Ford, but that it was engineered to be the least expensive truck possible.

kube-system 4y ago
A part or a feature can’t fail if the car doesn’t have it. In this way, simple vehicles have an inherent advantage.
thereddaikon 4y ago
Affordable trucks have mostly disappeared. They have been climbing up the price brackets for a few generations now. Its gotten to the point that before the Maverick your choices were either absurdly expensive luxury truck or buying a trim meant for commercial use that has no features at all. There did not exist a normal truck anymore. Well, they did nominally. But good luck finding one for sale. Why sell lower tier F-150s when you can build them as Raptors and have a higher profit margin? So the Maverick is popular not because of any great quality it has. But because there is a massive hole in the market. Reviews I have seen show it as fairly mediocre and generally less capable than previous cheap trucks.
- jwozn 4y ago
  I read also read reviews, and while I agree with your conclusions I also think the reviewers still loved it! Mediocre in that you don't get many bells and whistles, less capable because you have a smaller bed, lower towing capacity, and can't be beat to hell like some older trucks. But affordability, size, and utility make it a hit.
  - thereddaikon 4y ago
    Actually I meant mediocre and less capable in that its a fwd unibody and not a body on frame rwd truck. An affordable truck wont have a lot of options. But I consider those two design choices to be kind of core to what a real truck is. A fwd unibody platform is ultimately a car wearing a truck's clothing. Just like crossovers may look like SUVs but when conditions get bad and Karen tries to go up an icey incline and finds out it in fact isn't. My benchmark with affordable trucks will be past models like the S-10 and Ranger. Those were small, light on options but still trucks with proper frames and a rwd drivetrain.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  I spent a lot of time in the early 90s in a cheap Japanese truck. 4-cylinder, manual transmission, RWD, standard suspension. Sure, I can believe that the Maverick is less capable in some ways. But in others, there is no comparison. At all. Modern expensive trucks are amazing, but that is also part of why they are expensive. You are being tricked into thinking the cost is 100% due to the fancy add-ons. It isn't. And when Toyota comes out with their small unibody truck (2024 or 2025), reviewers will gush and swoon over it. And most of those reviewer complaints about the Maverick being mediocre will fade away (or at least "not apply" to the Toyota version). At these prices, you don't get to do what an F150 or Silverado or Tundra does.
  - thereddaikon 4y ago
    It's a front wheel drive unibody. Depending on your definition it isn't actually a truck. That's what I mean by mediocre and lacking capability. Not the extra options you can get on a King Ranch or Raptor. But the core essence of a truck. When I compare the Maverick to previous small, affordable trucks I'm not comparing it to a stripped out F-150. I'm comparing it to a Chevy S-10 or Ford Ranger.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>What's really surprising about the Ford Maverick rated so highly is not really that it's a brand new vehicle from Ford, but that it was engineered to be the least expensive truck possible. Ford kicked off the Maverick project with the goal of low sticker price AND the expectation of low sales volume. To cut the sticker price they reused a bunch of proven tech from the Focus/Escape/Transit Connect parts bin rather than the half baked New Hotness(TM). In order to recoup engineering costs despite low volume they were forced there was little room in the engineering man-hours budget for the automotive equivalent of "trendy JS framework of the month to the detriment of everything he works on" and other "pad my resume and/or hit my KPIs to the detriment of the product" behavior that plagues BigCo engineering projects. Basically they were forced to attack it like they were building an Escape (an already reliable and well liked vehicle) with a bed and facelift, not a new vehicle and that path offers a lot less opportunity to build bloated trash than the "develop a new vehicle" path does.
jtbayly 4y ago
Simplify the vehicle by removing all the gimmicky crap that they use to justify charging extra, and it gets more reliable? Crazy...

kube-system 4y ago

A part or a feature can’t fail if the car doesn’t have it. In this way, simple vehicles have an inherent advantage.

thereddaikon 4y ago

Affordable trucks have mostly disappeared. They have been climbing up the price brackets for a few generations now. Its gotten to the point that before the Maverick your choices were either absurdly expensive luxury truck or buying a trim meant for commercial use that has no features at all. There did not exist a normal truck anymore. Well, they did nominally. But good luck finding one for sale. Why sell lower tier F-150s when you can build them as Raptors and have a higher profit margin? So the Maverick is popular not because of any great quality it has. But because there is a massive hole in the market. Reviews I have seen show it as fairly mediocre and generally less capable than previous cheap trucks.

jwozn 4y ago
I read also read reviews, and while I agree with your conclusions I also think the reviewers still loved it! Mediocre in that you don't get many bells and whistles, less capable because you have a smaller bed, lower towing capacity, and can't be beat to hell like some older trucks. But affordability, size, and utility make it a hit.
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  Actually I meant mediocre and less capable in that its a fwd unibody and not a body on frame rwd truck. An affordable truck wont have a lot of options. But I consider those two design choices to be kind of core to what a real truck is. A fwd unibody platform is ultimately a car wearing a truck's clothing. Just like crossovers may look like SUVs but when conditions get bad and Karen tries to go up an icey incline and finds out it in fact isn't. My benchmark with affordable trucks will be past models like the S-10 and Ranger. Those were small, light on options but still trucks with proper frames and a rwd drivetrain.
Kon-Peki 4y ago
I spent a lot of time in the early 90s in a cheap Japanese truck. 4-cylinder, manual transmission, RWD, standard suspension. Sure, I can believe that the Maverick is less capable in some ways. But in others, there is no comparison. At all. Modern expensive trucks are amazing, but that is also part of why they are expensive. You are being tricked into thinking the cost is 100% due to the fancy add-ons. It isn't. And when Toyota comes out with their small unibody truck (2024 or 2025), reviewers will gush and swoon over it. And most of those reviewer complaints about the Maverick being mediocre will fade away (or at least "not apply" to the Toyota version). At these prices, you don't get to do what an F150 or Silverado or Tundra does.
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  It's a front wheel drive unibody. Depending on your definition it isn't actually a truck. That's what I mean by mediocre and lacking capability. Not the extra options you can get on a King Ranch or Raptor. But the core essence of a truck. When I compare the Maverick to previous small, affordable trucks I'm not comparing it to a stripped out F-150. I'm comparing it to a Chevy S-10 or Ford Ranger.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

>What's really surprising about the Ford Maverick rated so highly is not really that it's a brand new vehicle from Ford, but that it was engineered to be the least expensive truck possible. Ford kicked off the Maverick project with the goal of low sticker price AND the expectation of low sales volume. To cut the sticker price they reused a bunch of proven tech from the Focus/Escape/Transit Connect parts bin rather than the half baked New Hotness(TM). In order to recoup engineering costs despite low volume they were forced there was little room in the engineering man-hours budget for the automotive equivalent of "trendy JS framework of the month to the detriment of everything he works on" and other "pad my resume and/or hit my KPIs to the detriment of the product" behavior that plagues BigCo engineering projects. Basically they were forced to attack it like they were building an Escape (an already reliable and well liked vehicle) with a bed and facelift, not a new vehicle and that path offers a lot less opportunity to build bloated trash than the "develop a new vehicle" path does.

jtbayly 4y ago

Simplify the vehicle by removing all the gimmicky crap that they use to justify charging extra, and it gets more reliable? Crazy...