2 door maverick maybe someday

[Darthie]

May as well bring the badge 'El Rancho' out of retirement and leave the Maverick as is.
It's not for me, I have had trucks with one seat. I always wished it had more inside storage.
As a Saturday night cruiser, it's great.

Well I looked for a 2 door ford ranger in good shape at a resonable price for a year. I love the longer bed and don't need a rear seat.

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[Surly Old Bill]

Structurally, it would be very difficult to make a 2-door unibody pickup style vehicle with a decent bed length. That's why the Maverick has an almost unusably short bed as it is.

I'd LOVE a modern version of a 70's/80's small pickup like Courier, Luv, Datsun, or Toyota. 2-door, 6'+ bed length. But it would have to be built as a body-on-chassis construction, which is more expensive to make.

And then there is the gorilla in the room; most "pickup" buyers never use it as a pickup, they use it as a passenger vehicle and rarely put anything in the bed. Ford and other manufacturers know this. There are commercial fleets and a few people that still use a pickup as a pickup, and Ford still makes an 8' bed 2-door F series for them. Not real big sellers on the private market compared to the garage queens with 4-doors and a short bed less than 6'. If everyone was clamoring for a compact truck with a usable 6'+ bed, Ford and others would make them. Too bad Canoo went under and no one bought their design rights to make as a Ford/Chevy/Toyota/Dodge/etc. That was a very utilitarian layout that could have been used as a work truck and camper, without being huge and ungainly like a F250/350.

 

[RobN]

Shorter wheelbase? Never happen, without changes to laws (or batteries).

The CAFE mileage standards are based on the footprint - wheelbase x width - so when you make it smaller, it has to be more fuel efficient. Sure, you lose some weight when you make it smaller, but there's a reason why those little cars have tiny engines. Hybrids need weight for the battery - extending the wheelbase gives you the room (in the mileage standard, more than the physical space) to add weight.

Lighter-weight batteries (that are fast charging, high number of charging cycles, and relatively safe in crashes) may be coming, but they're not here yet. Until they are, you probably won't like the tradeoffs they'd have to make to get that smaller look.

 

[Surly Old Bill]

May as well bring the badge 'El Rancho' out of retirement and leave the Maverick as is.
It's not for me, I have had trucks with one seat. I always wished it had more inside storage.
As a Saturday night cruiser, it's great.

The Toyota "extracab" was just right. Other companies made something similar, then that tiny extra space turned into full-time seats, and doors were added, and now most residential pickups are 4-doors.

Also, I'm going to re-badge my Maverick with Ranchero trim. That should have been the name from the start; the Maverick was an economy car, the Ranchero was a pickup-esque car.

 

[Darthie]

Would you be all in at say 55k? Added cost to create any entirely new unibody structure, retooling the line for 2 different chassis rolling along.

50k for sure.

 

[Scott Asheville]

People love to rag on small 2-door pickups, with a false narrative that nobody wants them. Because overpriced 2-door large and midsize trucks failed to sell doesn't mean squat.

I'll point out to everyone who owns a Maverick that for ten years Ford was selling a false narrative that nobody wanted a small truck (which is actually kind of true, because the Maverick is not a small truck - it is 3" longer than a Telluride). Then Ford offered something desirable and are on the road to selling a million of them (at a constantly increasing price, as they try to find out how much we'll pay).

Beware false narratives from self-appointed-know-it-alls. Something like 30% of full size Bronco sales are the 2-door. Which again caught Ford by surprise.

"If Ford thought...". Um, as I just pointed out, Ford didn't think the Maverick would sell well. They didn't design a 2-door Maverick because they were counting pennies on a cheap low-volume product (or so they thought at the time).

 

[Jah.]

I sure enjoy four doors on the Mav . had f150 extra cab with sort of 4 doors . had to open main doors in order to access rear doors (PIA) .

 

[Surly Old Bill]

I concur that the Maverick is not a "small" truck. Here it is next to my Transit 250 148MR, about 2' shorter and 5" narrower:

Note that I can seat 10 people in the Transit, and haul 10' boards with the rear doors shut, and haul plywood on the floor between the wheel wells. I can also stand up in it, but that's an irrelevant comparison. The Maverick seems to have less room inside, and a 2' shorter bed, than the last small truck I had, a 2000 Toyota SR5 extracab 4x4. Which was the same length as the Maverick, and 6" narrower. (looked up the stats; 2000 Tacoma was 66" wide interior, Maverick is 57"). So, what is accounting for that lost space inside? It's over a foot counting the extra outside width and less interior space! Maybe it's safety beams to meet crash tests? The Tacoma passed crash tests, maybe they were different 25 years ago.

Ford could take the Transit 130 wheelbase, which is 220" long (Maverick is 200") and make a "pickup" version, also adding the hybrid system from the F150, or the whole drivetrain from the Maverick. You'd have a capable pickup for actual hauling and about 30+ mpg. The 210" short F150 only has a 6'6" bed. The 220" Transit can fit 8' length materials inside. But very few people seem to want to buy something like that; just businesses and stupid carpenter types like me.

 

[bgn]

Not only do 2-door trucks not sell well, but there's also no reason for them to willingly design one, tool up the factory, and cut their profit margins when people choose one over their real truck options.

If it happens, it'll likely be when the Maverick moves to EV. But I doubt it will.

 

[Art Vandelay]

People love to rag on small 2-door pickups, with a false narrative that nobody wants them. Because overpriced 2-door large and midsize trucks failed to sell doesn't mean squat.

I'll point out to everyone who owns a Maverick that for ten years Ford was selling a false narrative that nobody wanted a small truck (which is actually kind of true, because the Maverick is not a small truck - it is 3" longer than a Telluride). Then Ford offered something desirable and are on the road to selling a million of them (at a constantly increasing price, as they try to find out how much we'll pay).

Beware false narratives from self-appointed-know-it-alls. Something like 30% of full size Bronco sales are the 2-door. Which again caught Ford by surprise.

"If Ford thought...". Um, as I just pointed out, Ford didn't think the Maverick would sell well. They didn't design a 2-door Maverick because they were counting pennies on a cheap low-volume product (or so they thought at the time).

I can kind of see your point but the thing is this can go both ways. I'll give you a perfect example.
I'm a manual transmission guy but even I know they're slowing becoming extinct. Many years ago I had a 2002 Maxima with a manual which was a really nice car and a super fun car to drive. Somewhere around roughly 2010 Nissan stopped offering a manual in the Maxima and the outrage on the Maxima forum was brutal. But the manual not being available anymore didn't even make a dent in their sales. And except for Miata, the take rate on any vehicle with a manual is usually less than 5%. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up thinking everyone wants the same features you want. Internet forums are not a good place to gauge consumer preferences because it's usually enthusiasts who frequent the forums.

The small minority of people yelling into the internet that they want a regular cab trucks are the same as the manual transmission holdouts who don't want manuals to die.

Just look at full size pickups. The full four door cab pickups far outsell the extended cabs and the two door full size pickup sales for Ford & Chevy are dismal. Ford, as well as all other auto manufacturers, have a pretty good idea of what sells and what consumer tastes are at every moment. If they're making almost solely crew cabs in their full size trucks it's because that's what consumers are demanding. Like I said previously, car internet forums aren't the best place to gauge consumer tastes because it's a small minority of enthusiasts.

 

[Surly Old Bill]

I have to wonder why you ever bought a Maverick.

40+ mpg vs 15mpg. I think that explains it.
I save about $150/month driving the Maverick around the majority of the time instead of the Transit 100% of the time. I don't need to haul big stuff every day, but I DO need to at least 1-2x a month (I'm a technical director/scenic designer/master builder for a live theater company).
I'll keep the Transit to haul big stuff and for it's use as a DIY RV, aka "campervan".
I'm just lamenting that I cannot find a "one vehicle does most" solution. Now I have to pay insurance on both of these, and take up space with parking cuz I can't drive both at the same time (can't reach both gas pedals at the same time...I should have got a Righthand Drive for one of them...).

 

[Surly Old Bill]

Visual aid describing what we're talking about with the evolution of pickup sales preferences over the years:

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