I’m a big fan of many, many things in this strange and complicated and sloppy world of ours, and two of those things are Things That Make Small Pickup Trucks Even Better and News That Is Many Months Late. Well, today is a good day because I have something that meets both of those criteria: a Ford patent application from May that describes something that would make Ford’s small unibody Maverick pickup significantly better, I think: a midgate.
It’s interesting – at least to me – to note that one month before this patent was filed I did a big review of the Maverick where the whole point of the review was that I liked the truck, but I sure would like it more if it had a midgate.
You know what I mean by midgate, right? It’d be a panel that opened from the bed and allowed cargo to extend into the cab, a bit. Like this:
This would fundamentally transform this already-useful unibody pickup into something incredibly useful, and I’m all for that. Let’s look at what this patent application is proposing, and I should note it was actually filed way back in October of 2022, but just published in May of this year. So I’m not trying to imply Ford got any ideas from me, because they didn’t:
The midgate design ford is showing here is a pretty simple, straightforward design, essentially just a rectangular opening accessed by folding down the rear seatback forward, into the cab, and folding a rear panel backward, into the bed. It’s very much like what Subaru did with the Baja:
You can see the seatback and panel folding setup in this diagram here:
It’s also worth noting that the thick, plug-like midgate hatch is designed to be level with the in-bed wheel wells, so you can lay, say, a flat sheet of plywood over the midgate hatch and wheel wells and form a “floor” with storage room below.
It’s not specifically mentioned that this design is for the Maverick in the patent, but as it is currently Ford’s only unibody truck and it sure looks like the Maverick in those illustrations, I think we can safely say this is intended for that truck.
The hatch’s latching system does look nice and secure, though in my head I want those handles to be flipped 180°? Is that just me? Seems like it’d be easier to pull down if they were flipped.
Of course, there are the usual midgate issues relating to the weather, since if you have the midgate open, the cold and wet of the outside world can now get into the cab, but since, I suspect, a midgate tends to be used for short, occasional trips where you need to carry something unusually long, I bet this is not a huge issue. This is the sort of thing you use to get a bunch of long 2x4s from the lumberyard to your yard, not something you’re using on a long roadtrip, unless your roadtrip snack of choice is a 6′ party sub.
I hope this patent actually gets turned into something real, instead of meeting the fate of most automotive patents, which function more like a dream journal for carmakers, just ideas, written down, never to see the light of day.
A midgate of any sort would be transformative for the Maverick, and I would love to see it happen!
Meh. Will this get used enough to justify adding complexity (cost) to a vehicle that’s intended to be cheap?
Midgates are cool but a more useful day to day update to the Maverick would be a trunk a la the RIdgeline. It’s unibody so it’s possible.
“Ford May Finally Give The Maverick The One Thing It Truly Needs”
A proper gear shifter???
The coolest thing ford could do to the maverick is make it a single cab.
Hey hey HEY now! You just get right the heck out of here with your “common sense” and “practicality”. You go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
Trucks are meant to be used to commute to work by a single person and the back seat is ONLY for their backpack. If you go around telling people that a truck with a usable bed is a thing, pretty soon everyone will want one!
Ha ha, just kidding, nobody wants a single cab and they sure as heck don’t want a long bed.
A bench up front and two jump seats in the back, c’mon Ford I’m begging you
Why don’t they make the rear window wind down into the mid gate ala the 4Runner tailgate, then fold down the middle, this just seems like common sense, is there a reason this doesn’t exist? Or is it because the mid gate gets used so little use they figure its too expensive to engineer for the use it would get?
I’m thinking so that you can keep the mid gate open with a bed cap and still have a sealed truck.
What’s preventing someone from being a human kabab when you inevitably get rear ended hauling some pipes or dimensional lumber? I guess you load it so the ends don’t tuck up behind your seat?
And here I thought it would be a manual transmission.
IIRC the Chevy Avalanche patent oil still in force which restricts what can be done. This still feels a bit like a half measure
Is this true?
Mid-gates are great if you never use your bed, vacuum and then wipe down the bed floor and remember to open the mid-gate often enough to keep the seals from adhering to the part they are sealing. As soon as you open them, all of the dirt and debris that is in the bed will be blown into the cabin. Any time you are on a dirty road, dust will be sucked in as well. Not to mention the noise. But the most important thing is that the rubber seals tend to either glue themselves to the parts thry are touching for so long, or worse, deteriorate. Then they don’t seal when up close the gate.
As a car salesman, I’ve seen too many Avalanche or Cadillac or even Subaru Baja come to the dealerships over time with those issues. Oh, and if it is wrecked bad, don’t expect it to open and close properly.
Unlike the Avalanche – you can run a bed cover on a Maverick that would keep the weather out of the bed. I presume Ford is expecting most folks to do this combo.
I dunno – that opening looks about the size of a pizza oven, which makes me wonder how useful it really would be. Given how low a Maverick sits compared to a full-size, I think I’d prefer just a set of tall bed racks, so I could throw my surfboard or 2x4s up on top instead and still have use of the fully enclosed passenger cabin.
Anything that would fit in that pizza oven would be easy enough to lift up top, and with a rack you could also fit longer and wider things, like kayaks, mattresses, ladders, whatever. Sometimes that DIY project calls for the 12-footer rather than the 8-footer.
Now I want a maverick with a pizza oven in it.
KRAMER: Yeah, we give you the dough, you smash it, you pound it, you fling it in the air; and then you get to put your sauce and you get to sprinkle your cheese, and then – you slide it into the oven.
GEORGE: You know, you have to know how to do that. You can’t have people shoving their arms into a six-hundred degree oven!
KRAMER: It’s all supervised!
You have to imagine that Ford is selling this for the suburban parent types. This is their family car now. So the roof rack is good. But this midgate in conjunction with a factory bed cap creates more space that they play with. Ford could even add a split rear seat so you get a back seat still while carrying longer items like hockey sticks. The cap keeps the full area secure (locked) and out of the weather unlike a roof or bed rack. This is just a way to make these trucks more functional for everyday use. Most folks will rarely use this. Anyone who needs more bed will buy a ranger or F150.
So basically a trunk pass-through like on a sedan. I can dig that. Adds a little versatility for carrying your skis or your board. Maybe the real issue is with us trying to call it a “midgate” when it’s really just a ski pass-through.
A midgate? And you can’t even move the glass? And here I was all excited that they were going to make a PHEV version…
I kind of expected this as well. price probably prohibits that, but a plug in Hybrid maybe at least.
I’ve just about talked my wife into letting me get one, but if there was a plug-in hybrid version available, it’d already be in the driveway.
It may just be you. Look closer at the drawing, the round knob unlocks the midgate and you push out on any part to open it (or it drops on it’s own). The rectangular handles are in that orientation so that when you’re reaching in from the front of the vehicle, you can grab the open midgate and pull on the handle to close it.
Ngl, looking at the patent pics it looks way too small to fit a canoe through, surfboards maybe but not a canoe.
It’s better than nothing but it arguably looks like the worst midgate I’ve ever seen.
Make the rear glass out of lexan and have it fold out of the way as well.
That was my thought, too, though maybe someone just did that for illustration example purposes as it stands out more than drawing some 2x4s would. A kayak could possibly fit, but the other issue is that the length even with the midgate open is going to be on the short side for all but the shorter kayaks. It would be more secure with more weight supported than it would without, but it would make more sense to just rest it on the roof either with an end in the bed or flat on top and then you could carry more than one of them.
It would be nice if the front passenger seat would fold flat like on the new Tacoma, then you’d have a lot more room provided everything lined up.
Now I’m thinking of having a Truck with a midgate where the floor of the truck and the bed are at the same level and you could easily remove the passenger side front and rear seats so you have all the space from the passenger footwell to the bed for storing long things.
That would be pretty cool. You could probably fit 12′ boards with the tailgate up.
That sounds like an awesome idea! I love the removable seats and flat floor idea. How about if we put some kind of lid over the rear section of our truck and patented that! We could call it something like a CR-go-Vn!
CR-Van-Gogh?
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/bollinger-reveals-four-door-b1-electric-suv-and-b2-electric-pickup/
so cool! I dug these, but it was not to be…
“I member!”
Make a deal with them.
If they build it, you will buy it.
Oh nice a midgate or, as I like to call it, a child fence.
I was thinking, child pass-through.
I just want a split-folding rear bench in my Maverick. With a car seat installed (quite a pain to do in the Maverick), access to the under-seat cubbies is not what I’d call “convenient”.
I’d just prefer a single cab with a long bed.
Hell, I’d take a single cab short bed at this point. Tighter turning radius, lighter weight, and better payload.
However yes, it should have at least a single cab 6ft long bed variant.
Dare to dream! 🙂
Well wish in one hand, and shit in the other. See which one fills up first.
How would one go about wishing into their hand? Also, I am pretty sure the other is not supposed to be done into the hand either.
You just need to try harder!
What if one wishes for shit in one’s hand?
Well my friend, then shit away! Shit away!
I ended up getting an off lease commercial 2019 Ford F350 extended cab 8 ft box for the same price as a Maverick. It is as close as I can get to a single cab. It seats 6 and have roll down windows.
A single cab Maverick would look like a contemporary version of the micro trucks I’ve been falling in love with.
Reminded of something in a British vintage car magazine in the 90s (long before they were online so I’m having a hard time with search engines for links) where they interviewed an English carpenter/woodworker who was still daily-driving his NSU Ro80 sedan which he used for his work because the rear seat back could be folded down for access to the trunk and since the front passenger seat could also fold flat he could transport long pieces of wood up to something like 3.5 meters long and still close the trunk lid. Who needs a truck when the 1968 COTY will do??
There have been a number of cars with fold-flat passenger seats in the past three decades…I had no idea the Ro80 had it that early.
Anyone get quoted by the AP today? Just wondering…
Seems like a fairly easy thing to do, and would add even more utility. I find it strange they can patent it since other car makes have done it before and already do, maybe just their latch design is the thing? But even that seems like a standard camper top type of latch design so not sure that’s even something.
They might not be able to get a granted patent on it. Looking at pending claim 1, it is written very broadly. They also just received their first office action from the patent office back in October. The office action rejects all the claims as they’re presently written over prior art, so I expect they’ll have to significantly narrow the claims in order to get an allowance. This is not legal advice.
If the mid gate were removable, and a camper shell with a crawl through was available that would be cool.
I assume the rear seats can be removed
It would be a nice Swiss Army knife of a vehicle. Oh, wait, those are Unimogs.
The Avalanche had a midgate WELL before Ford did….try and tell me another manufacturer who did, but Ford would be copying them by this design, unless they are making some design changes…
The Silverado EV has it right now too.
These are concepts (and the execution of the midgate is different), but if you really want to know… the Nissan SUT (1999) and Ford Equator (2000) both beat the Avalanche (2002).
I mean…the Avalanche Base Camp concept also debuted in 1999…
The Avalanche prototype was completed then as well…I do not really think that is a big difference….
I love my Maverick. It’s such a useful multitool of a car.
I would want this for 2 reasons.
Nice. Would be nicer if you could get the glass out of the way too like GM’s mid-gate.
Even nicer if they did a 2 door with a longer bed, won’t happen, cause trucks are cars now
I was just thinking the same thing. If it had that I would be interested, but as is it’s too limited in its usefulness.
You can’t get the glass out of the way? What use is that? Never mind.
Getting the glass out of the way is easy. Getting it back in is the hard part.
Worst puzzle ever.
learn this one useful trick for making every truck more useful
Exactly my thought. With an Avalanche / Silverado EV style full height midgate it’d be a lot more useful for hauling larger things, more convenient for camping, and just cooler to drive around in when the weather’s good. I don’t really have any cargo that I’d want to have hanging in to the back seat area that I wouldn’t be fine with just hanging out over the back instead.
Yes, exactly. People just don’t see stuff hanging out the back, and I would much rather have that canoe get rammed into the end of the pick up bed, then fly unimpeded into the back of my head.
I have seen several pick ups with a 6 inch U channel bolted to the front of the bed horizontally so that when steel pipes are loaded into the bed, it is slightly safer if the truck gets rear ended.
I myself am of the chain it to the side of the truck school, but some people really like that shiny paint so there you go.