One of the keys to adulting is resilience. Plans change, kids grow into adults, wedding receptions get outnumbered by celebrations of life, and on it goes. Riding the vicissitudes, the imperative is to keep on keeping on, Bob Dylan crooned, like a bird that flew.
Fortunately, the 2024 Ford Maverick small pickup truck hasn’t changed much since it launched in 2022. Unfortunately, the hybrid model is now the more expensive one. Ford originally priced the hybrid as the entry-level model, costing about $1,500 less than the model with the 2.0-liter turbo-4. Now the hybrid costs $1,500 more, with the turbo-4 starting at $25,410 and the hybrid at $26,910, including the $1,595 destination fee. In 2022 when it launched, the Maverick Hybrid XL cost $21,490. So the entry-level hybrid is now $5,520 more.
The Maverick is still a winner. Way back then, the Ford Maverick won The Car Connection Best Car To Buy 2022—our highest honor—for its value and utility, which are the same reasons why it won our Best Pickup Truck To Buy 2024 this year.
The last time it was in my driveway, in 2022, I considered placing an order to make it the future vehicle for my teens, then 15 and 14 years old. Waits were long, deliveries unknown, income static. Now they’re both driving different cars, lesser cars, bedless cars. Rationalizing regret is another key to adulting.
Another turn with the 2024 Ford Maverick Lariat hybrid proved that the Maverick still fosters the resilience needed for adulthood. Instead of using the bed to stow stinky hockey goalie gear and savor the 37-mpg average during jaunts across the Midwest, we stuck around town, and the kids helped me clear out their grandfather’s garage. He couldn’t take those unopened Farm and Fleet shelving brackets and discounted ratchet sets to the great workshop in the sky.
On one trip, we laid down a 52-inch tall dresser that fit perfectly in the 54.4-inch long bed to deliver to their cousin’s big boy bedroom. The spray-in bed liner, now standard on the 2024 Lariat, prevented it from getting a steel rash. The drawers stacked on the flip-up back seats, where we stowed jumper cables, ice scrapers, and other garage extras. In the bed beside the dresser, we wedged in Dremel kits and Sawzall cases and power sanders, secured by two bungee cords crossed in two of the 10 bed tie-downs.
On another trip we loaded the Craftsman mechanic’s tool chest, an item that will never uphold its honor in my garage, but at least it’ll help organize some of the dadly detritus. This heavy beast had to be moved upright on its locked wheels, but the Maverick’s modest lift height of 30.1 inches made it relatively easy to load, no bed step, no pull handle, all lifting with the legs, saving the back. We slid the clamps along the rails to best adjust our web of bungees, stacked in stray lumber, dusted off old socket sets and all the drill bit sets that were always about the deal more than the drill, nestled it all with a shelving unit heading to their uncle’s. Some Easter candy bags filled the side pockets of the bed. You’re never too old for a Reese’s peanut butter egg.
Back and forth we went through the ’burbs, averaging 39.3 mpg, charging our phones on the Lariat’s newly standard wireless smartphone charger, the teenagers in back with enough legroom though 34.9 inches is hardly ample, the adults in front fine with Ford’s notoriously short seat bottoms.
We made several stops, like deep breaths, carrying that weight. Carrying over the generational objects that by themselves were indistinguishable but as a whole defined a man weighed heavier than the Maverick’s 1,500-pound payload.
The Maverick simplified the physical part, and the kids admired the Black Appearance package ($1,645) with 18-inch black aluminum wheels, a black grille, black mirror caps, and other elements that give the weekend workhorse some style. While it awaited its next calling in the driveway, I had to fight off the teens from wanting to drive it; they played in the bed, instead, as if we were still young.
We never had to adjust the tailgate to a 45-degree angle to haul longer items, but one of us who’s writing this might have used the gate tiedowns on the end to uncap a beer. The toasts went late, the night went on, and I left the truck behind, picking it up the following morning by riding over on my bike, then tossing it in the bed, resilient-like.
I still want to own a Ford Maverick, for these reasons and more: for good efficiency and better economy, for spring landscaping runs, for helpful neighbor duties, for airing out stinky hockey gear, for college move-in and move-out dates, for moving through life’s millstones that become milestones.
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2024 Ford Maverick Hybrid Lariat FWD
Base price: $27,010, including a $1,695 destination fee
Price as tested: $37,510
Drivetrain: 2.5-liter inline-4 hybrid, front-wheel drive
EPA fuel economy: 42/33/37 mpg
