Buying Culture

Does the Ford Maverick, with its bargain price and thrifty fuel economy, make the small car obsolete? We fire up a 2022 Honda Civic sport and head to Costco to find out.

- By Ezra Dyer. Photography by Michael Simari

AMERICANS OWN A LOT OF CRAP. SO MUCH, IN FACT, THAT THERE'S A WHOLE TV INDUSTRY DEVOTED TO OUR BOTTOMLESS APPETITE FOR ACQUISITION.

Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Storage Wars, Hoarders—these shows revolve around our possessions, how we accrue and dispose of them, how they come to rule our lives. For many of us, our mountainous volume of belongings outstrips the size of our homes (consider that construction of personal storage units increased 584 percent between 2015 and 2020). And if the junk has to go somewhere, it also has to get there. Which is why the hottest new economy car is a pickup: the 2022 Ford Maverick.

The Maverick's earnest usefulness seems to demand few sacrifices. Unibody with a strut front and torsion-beam rear suspension, it drives more like a Bronco Sport than a Ranger. The standard model is a hybrid with an EPA fuel-economy estimate of 37 mpg combined. Its base price is $21,490, and the truck can tow 2000 pounds and haul 1500 pounds in its bed. The Maverick offers 191 horsepower in hybrid form and 250 horses with a turbo 2.0-liter four. So what's the catch? Why wouldn't you just buy one of these instead of, say, a Honda Civic? We were asking ourselves the same thing, so we decided to grab a $26,645 Maverick XLT hybrid and a $26,183 Civic Sport sedan and find out for ourselves whether Ford's small truck could make the small car obsolete.