Ford Maverick vs Ford Tourneo Custom

What's the difference?

Is this the car Ford Australia is crying out for? 

It’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves from afar ever since the Maverick first appeared in the USA in 2021. In simple terms this is an SUV disguised as a ute, or if you prefer to look at it another way, a ute designed for the urban environment. 

Why does Ford Australia need it? Because utes are what it does best and SUVs are what it struggles with. The Ranger is, by some margin, its best-selling model and the F-150 is coming to a showroom near you soon, while the Escape SUV has been dropped due to consistently low sales. 

The Maverick isn’t quite a true replacement for the Falcon ute, but it’s arguably closer in concept than the more rugged Ranger.

It’s the kind of vehicle that should pacify people calling for Subaru to bring back the Brumby. In other words, this is a vehicle that has the potential (key word) to appeal to a broad audience; even more so than the niche Bronco off-roader.

There's a significant catch, though. Ford doesn’t make it in right-hand drive.

Fortunately for CarsGuide we were recently given the opportunity to sample the Maverick in the USA getting behind the wheel of the XLT Tremor variant in Los Angeles, California.

This idea hasn’t always worked out too well. Take a parcel-van (in this case the Ford Transit Custom) strip out the rubber matting and cargo barrier and bolt six or seven seats into what was the load area. Sure, the original vehicle to use this concept, the Volkswagen Kombi way back in the 1950s, got away with it, possibly because there wasn’t anything better around.

Ford has plenty of history with this notion, too. The first Transit of 1965 was also available as a mini-bus, but worked okay because the Transit itself was such a car-like departure from the commercial-vehicle norm.

Things didn’t go so well for Ford in the early 1980s, however, when the Econovan-badged parcel van it shared with Mazda (the E2200) was fitted with eight seats, given some fuzzy velour trim and dubbed the Spectron. And it was dreadful. In fact, so bad, that it made the contemporaneous Mitsubishi Nimbus and the even more forgettable Nissan Prairie seem like vastly superior alternatives to the job of moving people. Only because they were.

Early versions of the Spectron retained the Econovan’s crude suspension, wheezy (and fragile) little engines and even the tiny dual rear wheels that entirely deprived the vehicle of any traction. In fact, dreadful doesn’t even cover it.

So you can see why Ford might be a bit antsy about me referring to the new Tourneo (a badge that has been around in Europe for decades) as a Transit Custom with extra seats and windows. Yet that kind of sums it up (up to a point, anyway). Luckily, the Transit Custom itself is a pretty sorted thing these days, so maybe Ford has nothing to worry about. Maybe…