The 2025 model year Ford Maverick was revealed earlier this week with a host of new features, styling tweaks and the availability of an all-wheel-drive hybrid model. Amid all that news, no one is really talking about how the Maverick isn’t quite the value it once was. In the three years since the Maverick went on sale, its base price has risen by nearly 25 percent.
The Maverick has been a huge hit for Ford since it first went on sale. Here was a vehicle that seemed to deliver on multiple fronts at once. It was a relatively small pickup for buyers who missed when trucks like the Ranger and Tacoma were actually compact, and it placed an affordable model back in Ford’s lineup a few years after the brand axed its small cars that started under $20,000. The Maverick was perfectly sized, fuel efficient and, most importantly, cheap. Ford touted a starting price of just $19,995 when the Maverick launched. Of course, many buyers at the time never saw that price as dealer markups were out of control, but on paper the Maverick was a deal.
Less than a year later, prices increased on nearly every trim save for the base XL, which still started under $20,000 (as long as you didn’t include destination charges). Just over two years later, the once-standard hybrid engine was dropped and made a $1,500 option in favor of a standard EcoBoost engine. This meant a Maverick hybrid couldn’t be had for less than $26,000.
Now with the 2025 model year Maverick, the price has risen once again. The base 2025 Maverick XL (once again a hybrid) costs more than a base Maverick did two years ago, with a starting price of $27,890. Sure, there’s new features like a larger touchscreen, updated styling and a higher available towing capacity, but the price has increased by 24.7 percent in the nearly three years the Maverick has been on sale.
What’s more interesting about this increase is that it seems to be higher than the average annual price increase for new cars as a whole. For instance, data from Texas A&M University’s Private Enterprise Research Center shows new car prices increased 5.8 percent from December 2021 to December 2022. From summer 2023 to this spring, prices actually decreased by 1.5 percent. Even during the worst of the pandemic, new car prices increased 11.7 percent, nowhere near the increases Ford has done on the Maverick.
Ford is no stranger to price hikes. The F-150 Lightning’s price increased four times in less than two years. It was enough to turn off some buyers who were hoping to score an electric F-150 under $40,000 like Ford initially promised. And last summer, Ford increased the price of the 2024 Mustang before the pony car even started to arrive at dealers.
With the price increases Ford has made on the Maverick, it sucks to see something that was once touted as affordable slowly becoming everything but. I hate to say it, but it probably won’t be long until we see the base price of the Maverick crest the $30,000 mark. Still, it remains one of the cheapest and most fuel-efficient pickups you can buy.