A Ford Maverick Could Be The Affordable, Practical Convertible The Market Is Missing

I don’t have all of the answers. The truth is, I have very few of them, but I’m not concerned. I have a backup.

Last week, I suggested that affordable, comfortable, and family-friendly convertibles would almost certainly return to the marketplace and offered some possible solutions. Were these the best solutions? Perhaps not, but I know that you, the most insightful commenters on all of the internet, are bound to have the answer to whatever automotive question that I pose indirectly, and the comments section of the post had what might truly be the key to the convertible conundrum

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The Dropping Of The Drop Top

As a healthy Autopian, I should be excited by some 1000-horsepower supercar being 0.2 seconds faster than another supercar with a mere 800 under the hood, but I really don’t give a shit. For some reason, I’m much more obsessed with understanding what cars regular people choose to spend their hard-earned cash on. Well, what normal regular people want to purchase, not folks like me who want to buy, say, an electric green Lamborghini Espada that doesn’t run or this cool-ass Lancia Beta sedan with U.S.-spec battering-ram bumpers.

I still stand by my statement that the demand will not disappear for cars with roofs that disappear; it’s just that there aren’t enough products today to make affordable and useable ragtops possible. The choices for drop-top fans today are about as limited as they’ve been since the late seventies when manufacturers thought they were about to be banned. There are high-dollar fancy coupes on one end with limited usable space:

On the other end of the open car spectrum, there are rugged, tire-and-wind-noise Jeeps and Broncos which are rather punishing as daily transportation. Stop pretending that you’re so hardcore in the school pickup lane! You aren’t David Tracy, my friend! I bet you’ve never even had trench foot for Chrissake.

Ultimately, neither of these convertible options above are a practical solution for the average family. The first decade of my life was spent riding around in the 1965 Ivy Green Mustang convertible my dad bought new before I was born. The ‘Stang then was much more of a sedan than the sports coupe it is today, a far more practical choice for buyers. With a decent back seat and a trunk, this worked fine as a family car for almost all of our tasks (until the trunk floor – which was also the top of the gas tank – started to rot away, that is). With Ford’s expansive option list, you could have ordered an example of a Mustang convertible to fit almost any budget, and these drop tops were everywhere.

Sixty years on, with the near-death of sedans, SUV crossovers are now the go-to for many yet the few crossover convertibles offered over the years like the Murano CrossCabriolet have flopped.

I tried my best to make a crossover SUV solution that did work at least a little better visually. Understandably, no one seemed to go for my failed interpretations on a late model example of the latest Murano:

The complaints about the few crossover SUV attempted are well-known and valid. The tall body section of an SUV makes a convertible version look rather dumpy; for some reason, the swoopy shapes of these crossovers compound the issue. Relatively high cost and the typical loss of cargo space from the conversion are the nails in the coffin of the idea.

Judging from the comments in the post, it sounds like the convertible the market needs has to be:

• Based on one of the most popular and affordable car-like vehicles out there
• Not particularly tall and/or be a relatively elemental “boxy” machine
• Offer a decent amount of cargo space with or without the roof or top in place

Whatever fits those parameters would be The Answer, but I’d mentally moved onto the next project at that point. However, you commenters just never quit, and you’ve always got the solution that I’m too dense to see sitting right in front of me.

Let’s Try This Again

There were a lot of great responses, but one that caught my eye was from commenter Canopysaurus:

Dear God: that’s the answer! No, not the way-too-niche Santa Cruz, but the top-selling unibody pickup from Ford, the Maverick! I was looking at typical sport utility crossovers and totally ignoring the unique vehicle that’s a far better fit for the Sawzall treatment.

With many strikingly new kinds of cars like the Fiero (that I just wrote about) and the AMC Pacer, sales crater after the first year when everyone that wanted it has already bought one. The Maverick is the opposite; a juggernaut that won’t stop. It’s a truck for people who never thought they’d want a pickup; supposedly over 65 percent of purchases are “conquest” sales, meaning the buyers used to drive a car or SUV of a different type and often from another brand. Soon the competition will offer their own interpretations of the unibody pickup, so Ford will almost certainly be looking for ways to stay a step ahead.

Wait: aren’t convertible pickup trucks an idea that historically hasn’t worked? The only ones you can probably think of are the short-lived Dodge Dakota convertible and maybe the much-lambasted Chevy SSR.

There have also been some recent semi-one-off conversions of pickup trucks that sadly look a bit like backyard custom vehicles that had their roofs cut off as best they could:

So the Maverick is a non-starter as well? In my opinion, no. As a five-seat smaller unibody pickup the Maverick is hardly the same thing as any of the above examples; it’s really almost unfair to call it a “truck”, and it’s not exactly an SUV. Still, the Maverick ticks every box on the list of the Ideal Vehicle To Decapitate above, right?

• • It’s an ultra-popular unibody pickup for non-truck people with a low starting price
  • Almost in a class by itself with strong year-over-year sales growth
  • As boxy as a Rubik’s cube, and all the better for it
  • With a covered pickup truck bed, it’s got more cargo space than even your uncle’s 1975 Impala

All right, now that we’ve got the perfect car to make into the affordable family convertible, I can see at least two different approaches to making an open version of Ford’s everyone-truck.

The Fac-Tree Ragtop

In the eighties, car manufacturers realized that convertibles were not going to be banned by government rollover standards as they had feared in the disco era. Most of them chose to toss their hats in the ring by offering “factory” convertibles that, in many cases, were steel-roofed cars modified by outside suppliers. American Specialty Corporation (ASC), originally founded as American Sunroof Corporation, was a popular choice for automakers looking to convertibilize their offerings.

That’s probably not an option for the Maverick convertible. The 1961-67 suicide-door Lincoln Continental is arguably the only really successful-looking four-door convertible, and with the unibody Maverick, it just isn’t an option unless you do something strange with a giant ugly “roll hoop” connecting the B-pillars to make the frameless door windows work. For that reason, I’d rather go with a good ol’ two-door.

No folding retractable hardtop; let’s keep an inexpensive fabric roof. I’m even thinking of having a removable snap-on “boot” to cover the folded top instead of a more complicated motorized cover that lifts up to keep it economical. A hoop behind the rear seat would also help with rigidity; again, no fancy pop-up rollover protection systems as on that Murano CrossCabriolet to add weight, cost, and complexity.

I’ve put the CHMSL on the tailgate, though we might need an additional one somewhere at the base of the top or on the “roll hoop” (or the CHMSL wraps over the top of the tailgate so it’s still visible when the gate is down). Look at that pickup bed! Here’s something that would drive like a car, carry as much as a little truck (because that’s what it is), and just happen to be a convertible.

Of course, making these new body stampings and other parts won’t be cheap, and like the Murano CrossCabriolet the price of the Maverick convertible will likely be far steeper than the standard car. Still, even if the modifications double the cost of the base $24,000 Maverick there’s nothing out there to touch it at the price for practical family fun in the sun.

What if you’re on a tighter budget and want something that opens to the sky but not open your wallet as much? Maybe here the aftermarket can come into play.

The Flip Top Truck

I’m not a huge fan of exposed window and door frames on a convertible but removing them is one of the biggest challenges and costs of making an open car, and more than half the time that’s the part that outside suppliers get wrong and cause you to come out of a car wash with a wet shirt and pants.

What if we found a relatively inexpensive way to get most of the roof itself to easily go away on the Maverick, even if it means keeping the sides of the thing intact? The answer might be the Flip Top. The center part of the roof and rear backlight are sawed out of the Maverick and replaced by plastic components with a two-stage opening process.

First, the section over the driver and front passenger can flip back and open, locking in place.

Base image: Ford

Next, you’d have to fold forward or remove your bed cover. Then, release a few catches and the whole rear section of the roof including the backlight and folded front section of roof folds back, around and into the open bed.

There are hydraulic struts that would either act as dampers so that the whole business doesn’t come crashing down, and help counterbalance it as you lift the thing back up again. If you wanted to spend a few more bucks, those hydraulic struts could raise and lower the whole business from the driver’s seat. You’d need to move cargo out of the bed to do this but if it’s not too heavy you could put it right back in again after the roof is down.

Yes, you’ve still got all the side frame still there, but roll down all the windows and you’ll certainly have a full open-air experience.

I don’t know what the cost of this system would be, but it’s got to be the least expensive way to get the roof to disappear on a nice day without having to lift it off manually. You could see an outside supplier easily doing this work and offering the converted Mavericks exclusively through a Ford dealership that isn’t afraid of selling custom products with a full warranty. There’s a Ford retailer in Southern California that did this with customized vans, Pintos, Mustangs and such in the seventies, but I’ve forgotten their name. Maybe they’d do it?

The Comments Section Comes Through Again

I’m frequently shocked at what I see in website comment sections. Are people really this rude? How do they hold jobs with that spelling and grammar? Not at The Autopian, though. Here, the comment section is often even more fun and insightful than the post itself. Who needs multi-million-dollar focus groups?

I’m glad that readers haven’t written off drop tops just yet, and very thankful for their solutions. Life is short, so we should have at least a few reasonable choices of open cars to help us enjoy it. Right now, the wall thermometer says that it’s 20 degrees outside my house; if you live down south and you’ve got a convertible, put the top down on your car just for us poor saps up here within hailing distance of the Canadian border waiting for spring.

 

Convertible SUVs And Crossovers Are Inevitable So We Might As Well Figure Out How To Make Them Work – The Autopian

Subaru Needs To Bring The Weird Back With A New BRAT – The Autopian

Does The New Dodge Charger Mean That A Revived Chrysler Cordoba Won’t Be Far Behind? – The Autopian

You Asked For It: A Minivan Made Cooler And More Versatile At The Same Time – The Autopian