No matter who you ask, they’ll tell you that the American automotive industry needs more affordable vehicles. You won’t find any new cars for less than $20,000 anymore, and there still aren’t many under $30,000. The Ford Maverick pickup is one option, so long as you’re OK without bells and whistles, and another is reportedly on the way from the Blue Oval. Interestingly, Ford says that it will also be an “affordable” gas-powered pickup, and I’m starting to wonder how those two models will co-exist.
It’s all part of Ford’s plan to introduce five models under $40,000 by 2030. We already know Ford is working on a cheap, electric truck—one that CEO Jim Farley has likened to a “Model T moment.” In all, we’re expecting a ton of pickups from the Dearborn manufacturer in the near future.
Ford Chief Financial Officer Sherry House said on Wednesday at a Wolfe Research Conference that the internal-combustion ute will be built at the brand’s new assembly plant in Stanton, Tennessee. Production is still a ways off, with sometime in 2029 as the planned start date. That makes sense, considering the changes being made at Ford’s work-in-progress BlueOval City complex. Just a couple of months ago, the manufacturer pivoted from building what it called the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center to what’s now been dubbed the Tennessee Truck Plant.
“It didn’t make sense to keep plowing billions into products that we knew would not make money,” Farley said on Bloomberg TV late last year. “We had to make this choice.”
Ford announced limited details about this new model back in December, though it largely went under the radar. The buzz spiked again when President Trump visited the automaker’s Dearborn Truck Plant, as Farley said, “We’re adding a combustion vehicle—a combustion truck, an affordable one—in Tennessee, to the president’s note. That’s what these policies are doing for Ford. We’re going to actually expand one of our existing plants and make a different kind of truck there.”
To me, Farley calling it “a different kind of truck” quashes any speculation that this might be the next-gen Maverick.
As it stands, the Maverick dominates the compact truck segment, and soon, it’ll be the only player in that space. The segment consisted of roughly 170,000 sales last year, which is decently sized, but still not enough to lure in other manufacturers like Toyota. It’s curious, then, that Ford would go through all this to develop a second affordable model—and it’s not like there’s much room above the Maverick before bumping against the Ranger.
Maybe we’re thinking about it all wrong. Perhaps it’ll be affordable, but not easily parallel-parkable. Ford hasn’t spoken on the truck’s size at all up to this point, so it’s possible that it could surprise us with a rig that’s both larger and simpler than the Maverick or Ranger. Having spent some time in an entry-level Maverick, however, it would have to feature absolutely no frills to go more basic than that.
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