2023 Ford Maverick Tremor First Test: Happier Than a Pig in Silt

Automakers are mining the adventurous American spirit and hitting paydirt. Channeling the raw awesomeness of pickups with names like TRX, Raptor, and ZR2, a secondary class of Rebels, Tremors, and Trail Bosses has made the great, rugged outdoors more accessible—sort of. The price tags of even these mid-tier mud bashers has up until now required you to be, if not filthy rich, at least not dirt poor.

The 2023 Ford Maverick Tremor changes that. Just as Ford's compact truck brought pickup prices back to earth last year, the new Tremor package puts off-road street cred within reach of mere tax-paying mortals. It's offered as a $2,995 option on the midlevel XLT and top-tier Lariat trims with all-wheel drive and the 250-hp turbocharged four-cylinder. That means a minimum of $31,165 or as much $45,000 for a well-equipped Tremor.

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What Makes a Ford Maverick Tremor Different?

The Tremor's big changes are a 0.8-inch suspension lift and a unique all-wheel-drive system that replaces the rear differential with a pair of clutch packs. As those clutches open and close, they vary how torque is distributed between the left and right rear wheels. Punching a button behind the Tremor's gear selector forces them shut, locking both the all-wheel-drive system and the rear axle. It's not just about finding traction on soft surfaces, though. When tuned properly and left to shuffle torque around, these twin-clutch drivetrains can also be a boon to handling. That's why you'll find similar setups in vehicles as varied as the Volkswagen Golf Rand the Range Rover Evoque.

Tremor trucks also get stronger halfshafts, a heavy-duty transmission cooler, and a low-speed off-road cruise control known as Trail Control. A unique front fascia, along with the hiked-up suspension, boosts the approach angle from 21.6 to 30.7 degrees. Seventeen-inch Falken Wildpeak A/T3W all-terrain tires, steel skidplates, and two off-road driving modes (Mud & Ruts and Sand replace the Sport and Eco modes in standard Mavericks) are lifted straight from the Maverick's other off-road kit, the $800 FX4 package we tested last year.

Inside, orange stitching and a flurry of Tremor badges add even more eye candy to a cabin that was already brimming with novel textures, colors, and patterns. Splashes of orange on the tow hooks, fender vents, grille trim, and wheel pockets add some interest to the Maverick's basic-box exterior design. An optional Tremor Off-Road Plus Appearance package, which wasn't fitted to our test truck, buys black hood and lower-door decals plus a gray roof, door handles, and mirror caps for another $1,495.

A Tremor Without All the Shaking

Thanks to its unibody construction, the Maverick isn't plagued by the bad behaviors that make many body-on-frame pickups feel like farm equipment when it comes to ride quality. There's no structural shaking over road imperfections and no pogoing up and down when the bed is empty. That's true whether you order the Tremor package or not.

Choosing the off-road hardware, though, isn't without compromises. As we found with the FX4 model, the Tremor's ride is less forgiving than the front-wheel-drive Maverick hybrid's. In addition to hitting potholes harder than the hybrid, the Tremor has a tendency to elicit side-to-side head toss when trundling over lumpy surfaces, both paved and unpaved, at low speeds.

That quibble is largely offset by the Maverick Tremor's extremely untrucklike handling. For a nose-heavy vehicle that favors sending torque to its front tires, its cornering behavior is a minor miracle. Credit the Tremor's advanced all-wheel drive, which powers the outside rear wheel in turns to help rotate the truck rather than steering solely with the front tires. The permanently enabled stability control means you won't be re-creating your favorite Gymkhana scenes in a Maverick Tremor, but this truck is far more limber than any marauding half-ton truck.

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Off-road, the Tremorized Maverick leans heavily on the basics—traction and ground clearance—rather than the monster-truck suspension travel that encourages Raptor-esque aerobatics and hardcore scrambling. As such, the Tremor is unlikely to convince the mouth breathers flinging third-grade insults that a Maverick isn't a "real" truck. It is plenty capable for how mostrealpeople use trucks in therealworld. It'll easily push through a sandy two-track to a remote cabin, slog through a rutted trail out to a deer blind, or plow into a freshly tilled field. And the skidplate can deliver a Heisman-worthy stiff arm to a boulder, a log, or a cherished Craftsman air compressor that you absentmindedly left in the blind spot created by the truck's hood. We speak from experience when we say that it works. The skidplate, that is. The compressor is now destined for a landfill.

The Maverick's 250-hp 2.0-liter turbocharged inline-four, on the other hand, feels like it's here to do the job it was hired for and nothing more. It dishes out ample power and torque without hesitation but is neither polished nor enthusiastic when asked to rev beyond 4,000 rpm. At the test track, the Tremor did trim half a second from our previous low 0-60 time set with the Maverick FX4, scoring a 6.5-second result that feels like a perfectly accurate snapshot of its performance. This is a quick truck, but it's not so quick that you'd brag about it.

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As an objectively cheap vehicle, the Maverick requires some sacrifices. The hard interior materials and the way they come together (or don't come together) are easy to look past. In the long run, you're more likely to begrudge the fact that you start this $32,490 truck with a key and use your own butt to warm the seat. You can, of course, pay more for a better-equipped model, but a Maverick never feels more expensive than its price tag. Because you're always paying the pickup premium for a Maverick, you'll still get fewer bells and whistles in a $40,000 truck than in comparably priced crossovers.

A One-of-a-Kind Truck

TheFord Maverick has carved out its unique position by leaning into certain pickup truck conventions while eschewing others. The Tremor package builds on that balance, elevating this compact truck's ability to find traction in tough terrain without hurting its everyday usability and road manners. You can say this about the Maverick, but it's even more true about the Tremor model: There's nothing else like this truck on sale today.