Seeing as how it’s already mid-December, we feel fairly confident in stating that the new Ford Maverick pickup truck is one of the most important vehicles to go on sale this year. (Hence, y’know, why we named it to our list of the 10 Best New Vehicles of the Year as part of our annual GP100 awards.) After all, the Maverick combines many of the best attributes of passenger cars (a comfortable ride, good fuel economy, an easy-to-handle size) and pickups (a capacious bed, boxy styling) — all at a price starting well below $25,000. It’s the sort of vehicle we’re shocked nobody thought of offering to truck-hungry Americans before.
But as anyone who’s ever shopped the pickup market knows, the market for different versions and variants is almost endless. (The Ram 1500, for example, offers eight trim levels, from bare-bones work models to luxury-car fancy ones to the 702-hp TRX.) So it’s not particularly surprising to hear that Ford may be planning an off-road-oriented Tremor version of the Maverick…but it certainly is intriguing.
That news comes to us from the Chilean National Institute of Industrial Property via CarBuzz, which reportedly discovered a trademark for Maverick Tremor filed in that country. Admittedly, that doesn’t mean anything is guaranteed to happen; automakers file patents and trademarks that they wind up not using all the time. Still, considering Ford already offers a Tremor off-road version of every other truck they sell in America — the Ranger, the F-150 and the Super Duty — adding the package to the Maverick seems like a likely course.
Assuming it follows the archetype of those other models, a Maverick Tremor would likely pack a lifted off-road suspension, all-terrain tire, tow hooks and other add-ons designed to make it a better platform for rock crawlers, such as added auxiliary power capabilities for lights and winches. All-wheel-drive would presumably be standard — we don’t see Ford finding a way to cram a low-range transfer case in there — which means the trucks would probably all pack the 2.0-liter turbo-four that’s required for AWD in the Maverick.
There is, of course, an even more extreme off-road trim level in the Ford arsenal that could theoretically make its way to the Maverick: Raptor. That said, Ford has been much more conservative with doling out that badge than it has with the Tremor one, and the Maverick’s crossover-based unibody construction likely wouldn’t lend itself all that well to the sort of high-speed trail-bashing that defines the Raptor breed.
That said…we’re still gonna start fantasizing about a Maverick Raptor rally truck packing the Bronco’s 2.3-liter turbo four designed to give the Subaru WRX something new to fear.
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