>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 le

>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.