How We Bought a 2022 Ford Maverick Hybrid Without an Order

Cars.com’s editorial department just purchased a 2022 Ford Maverick, an all-new compact pickup truck in especially high demand amid an ongoing inventory crisis, and we did so outside the ordering process. A combination of dogged efforts and sheer luck landed us a well-equipped Maverick Lariat with the hybrid engine, a combination that’s been sold out for new orders since late 2021. We don’t believe we received any special treatment from Ford in terms of pricing or availability; in fact, we paid more than sticker price. It showed up on a vehicle carrier in late January, a painless ending to an uncertain process started in early November. In the more than 10 years we’ve been purchasing long-term test vehicles, we can’t say we experienced anything quite like this.

Related: Best of the Year 2022

It’s Cars.com’s annual tradition to buy and own our Best Of-winning vehicle — our top award — for at least a year, so we surveyed the landscape to see which version of the Maverick we’d buy. Predictably, the choices narrowed faster than the walls of a Death Star trash compactor. But find one we did.

What We Wanted

Even in the best of times, we seldom get our exact wish list of features, trim levels and colors, but it’s always instructive to specify them in the first place. As a priority, we wanted the Maverick hybrid because it’s the more notable offering: a front-wheel-drive-only pickup with a total 191-horsepower, 2.5-liter hybrid four-cylinder and an EPA-rated 37 mpg combined. (Ford also offers a gas-only Maverick with a 250-hp, turbo four-cylinder and available all-wheel drive.)

The Maverick comes in XL, XLT and Lariat trims, and we toyed with the idea of buying a base-grade XL just to prove it’s not a penalty box (it really isn’t) but decided we’d need creature comforts like heated seats for duty around Cars.com’s Chicago offices. That restricted us to the XLT or Lariat, with the heaters courtesy of an optional luxury package on either trim. We also wanted Ford’s Co-Pilot360 suite, which adds a blind spot warning system and lane departure warning with steering assist; it’s a prerequisite for the luxury-packaged Lariat, at any rate.

Spreadsheets at the ready, we set out to find an XLT or Lariat in front-drive hybrid format with the Co-Pilot360 and luxury packages. Unsurprisingly, the current inventory and a later on-sale timeframe for the hybrid meant pickings were beyond slim: When we started searching in November, just seven Maverick examples nationwide on Cars.com fit the bill for our needs. We called all seven respective dealers to learn every truck was either sold and in transit or of unknown status.

Wait Times: 20 Weeks to Eight Months

That forced a pivot. We decided to try ordering a Maverick from the factory instead, filing an order through Ford’s consumer website for a front-drive Maverick Lariat hybrid with Velocity Blue paint and both the Co-Pilot360 and luxury packages. Ford routed the order through a suburban dealer west of Chicago, but a call to the showroom unearthed bad news: It could take six to eight months for our Maverick Hybrid to show up. We called a second dealership, which quoted us 20 weeks on the hybrid. Another dealership wouldn’t commit to any estimate, saying there was no way to predict how long it would take.

To document the process for a real consumer and avoid special treatment due to Cars.com’s platform, we contact dealers and negotiate as much as possible with our personal email addresses and cellphone numbers. (Understand, of course, that the cat’s out of the bag when we reveal a given vehicle as a corporate purchase.) But faced with the possibility that we couldn’t acquire a Maverick until well into the 2022 calendar year, we made a rare departure from tradition and reached out to Ford’s public relations team to see if there was a way they could help with acquiring a Maverick sooner (but not cheaper). It was a futile point; they couldn’t help, so we continued reaching out to dealers with our personal information. As such, we haven’t knowingly received any special treatment from Ford in this process.

Even the Non-Hybrid Was Rare

With the extended wait time on the Maverick hybrid, we pivoted back to the non-hybrid, thinking a loaded AWD example might work instead. We scoured the Chicago metro area, calling 16 dealerships to see if they had any examples. Thirteen had no Mavericks on hand; a representative at one store said the truck was back-ordered into 2022 with no orders falling through. The remaining three had a combined four trucks — all XL or XLT models with the turbo engine, which we’d just as well avoid because they didn’t have the features we wanted if we were resorting to a gas-only model. One of those was a test-drive unit not for sale, we were told.

So we might have to order one after all, at least as a fail-safe while our search continued. If we’d have to do that, we might as well get what we wanted: the hybrid. It seemed doubtful that any dealer could cut the line to score a materially sooner delivery, but we figured we’d at least reserve our truck from the store that had quoted us the shortest wait time, 20 weeks.

We filed an order with that dealer in early November, deposit and all, for a custom-built Maverick Lariat hybrid. A 20-week timeframe would put us into late March.

That turned out to be optimistic. Three weeks later, on Nov. 29, we called to check in on timing. A different representative told us it would be 26 to 28 weeks from when we’d ordered the truck, not 20 weeks — meaning we wouldn’t have our Maverick hybrid until well into the spring.

Indeed, Ford’s production timing didn’t leave much wriggle room. Ford gave the green light for sales on the non-hybrid Maverick in mid-September and on the Maverick hybrid Nov. 27, spokesperson Dawn McKenzie told Cars.com in an email. In between those dates, the automaker had said it expected the hybrid “to be fully reserved by early November,” with orders closing to reopen in the summer of 2022. Ford confirmed in early December that the Maverick hybrid was sold out for the 2022 model year; it would later say orders were closed for the non-hybrid Maverick, too.

Hybrid Hopes Not Dashed Yet

Back in late November, around the same time Ford green-lit orders for the Maverick hybrid, we started seeing more examples pop up in the automaker’s nationwide dealer inventory. We called around to a few dealerships to find that the trucks were, in fact, en route and available — for a price. Two showrooms we called, one in California and another in Ohio, wanted $5,000 more than sticker for their incoming examples. A third dealer, also in Ohio, said nothing about a markup on its incoming unit, a well-equipped Maverick Lariat FWD with the gas-electric 2.5-liter hybrid four-cylinder, Carbonized Gray Metallic paint, Desert Brown leatherette seats, the Lariat Luxury Package, Ford Co-Pilot360 and floor liners. It stickered at $31,000, complete with a Monroney posted online. A salesperson told us it would arrive by “by the end of the week or the beginning of next.”

That was the best lead we’d heard yet. We asked to reserve the truck.

The next day, Nov. 30, the other shoe dropped: The salesperson told us it was a sold unit ordered back in July, but the dealership was having trouble tracking down the original customer. Our salesperson said they’d just as well sell it to us at a $2,500 markup — half of what the others wanted, which we hadn’t revealed — if they couldn’t find the buyer. Our salesperson was also no longer sure when it would arrive. At this point the dealer hadn’t even been invoiced for it, so it could be earlier in the transit process, we were told.

The deal seemed a long shot, barring the original buyer going missing.

Never Say Never

Lo and behold, no buyer ever materialized; one didn’t even exist, as it turned out. We’d later learn the dealer had ordered the truck for its own stock, so it was ours for the taking. On Dec. 10, we put down a $500 deposit to mark it sold. Our timing proved lucky: Our salesperson later counted 26 entries in the dealer’s customer database regarding that very Maverick, presumably coming after our initial inquiry. We’d evidently reached out at just the right moment.

A week later, on Dec. 17, we were told the truck was expected sometime between Jan. 12 and Jan. 18. It’s “been built and released” and “awaiting [the] shipping company,” our salesperson said.

We asked if the dealership could quote us the cost to ship the truck up to Chicago, just over 300 miles northwest. Our salesperson came back at $800, just a few hundred dollars more than our estimate to fly down and drive it back, including gas and a few meals, so we agreed.

On Jan. 17, our salesperson texted us photos of our Maverick perched across the dealership’s showroom from a couple of F-150s. We signed paperwork Jan. 18 and paid $34,085 — $31,000 for MSRP and destination, $2,500 in dealer markup, $285 in documentation and other fees, and $800 to ship it to Chicago, minus the $500 deposit we’d put down a month prior. We filed all paperwork electronically, meaning we never set foot in a dealership to buy our Maverick. The next day, Jan. 19, the dealership confirmed our funds had been received and the dealership was scheduling shipping.

It would take another six days for the truck to arrive, the product of our dealership trying to find a truck driver and, possibly, widespread snow across the area. But it finally got here on a frigid Jan. 25. With paperwork completed online, the funds wired over and the vehicle unloaded at our front door, we ended 12 weeks of car shopping in a state of mild disbelief. With improbable ease, a Maverick we never thought we’d find — at least, not until one was custom-built and shipped out in May — was actually here.

Here’s the Maverick we bought:

2022 Ford Maverick Lariat FWD

• 2.5-liter hybrid four-cylinder, continuously-variable-style automatic transmission
• 191 hp, EPA-estimated 37 mpg combined
• Carbonized Gray Metallic paint
• Desert Brown ActiveX vinyl seats
• Dual-zone automatic climate control
• One-touch power windows for both rows, power sliding rear window
• Keyless access and push-button start
• 8-inch touchscreen with wired Apple CarPlay, Android Auto; 6.5-inch gauge display
• Eight-way power driver’s seat, six-way manual passenger seat
• Automatic emergency braking
• Ford Co-Pilot360 (includes blind spot warning system, lane departure warning with steering assist)
• Lariat Luxury Package (includes adaptive cruise control, heated front seats, heated steering wheel, rear parking sensors, remote start, trailer hitch receiver, Satellite radio, spray-in bedliner, wireless phone charging)
• Total price (including destination): $31,000

What Our Experience Means to You

If you’re shopping a Maverick, or really any car in high demand during the current inventory shortage, our experience bears a few things out:

• Keep those eyes peeled. Just because a car isn’t in dealer inventory today doesn’t mean it can’t show up tomorrow or next week. Tipped off by owner forums, we learned of the Maverick hybrid being green-lit for sale, a status Ford ultimately confirmed. Sporadic inventory began popping up around the same time, sprouting new leads that ultimately landed us with the truck from Ohio. Vigilance pays dividends.
• Not all prices above sticker are created equal. In a seller’s market like the current one, cars in high demand might mean paying above sticker: Negotiated prices for some 9 in 10 vehicles these days are near or above MSRP, J.D. Power told us recently. It’s a situation no shopper wants to find themselves in, but above-sticker prices are hardly uniform. Cast your net as wide as possible and you might find some dealers willing to sell for less markup than others, as we did.
• Finding the right car might require eating a deposit on your second choice. We had to commit to another choice along the way — ordered as a backstop in case we couldn’t find a dealer unit — at the total cost of a few hundred dollars’ deposit. Such is the opportunity cost of finding the right car.

Stay tuned for coverage of our Maverick hybrid all year long on Cars.com.

Editor’s note: This story was updated Feb. 28, 2022, to clarify the Maverick’s engine displacement.

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