With straps and a couple of six-inch boards, owners can haul 4x8 sheets of plywood and drywall. The Hyundai has an in-bed trunk compartment that doubles as a tailgate party cooler much like Ridgeline, but the Santa Cruz is 14 inches shorter (and four inches under the Maverick). architecture, the Santa Cruz’s design is swept and sleek compared with the awkward Baja and traditionally styled Maverick. The Santa Cruz gets compared to Honda’s unibody Ridgeline and the not-so-lamented Subaru Baja trucklet. The company already has “100,000 reservations in big costal cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and Orlando,” according to Mike Levine, a Ford spokesman. Perfect for people who buy on functionality, not testosterone. The front-drive Maverick hybrid (all-wheel-drive requires an optional 2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine powertrain) is expected to deliver 40 miles per gallon in city driving, 33 highway. Let’s see how Brad Paisley works permanent-magnet electric traction motor and lithium-ion battery pack into his lyrics. But the official unveiling dropped jaws like undampened tailgates - base models, starting around $21,450 when they arrive this fall, run with a four-cylinder hybrid powertrain. Long before Ford acknowledged the Maverick’s existence, spy photos made it clear that the company had a new compact truck in development. Built on the same crossover architecture as the Bronco Sport and Escape, the Maverick slots under the Ranger in size. The big news in small is Ford’s 2022 Maverick.