Reviewed: The Ford Maverick Lobo – The Revival of the Sport Truck?

by Greg Karpinski

In the 1980s and into the early 1990s, minitrucking was at the height of its popularity.  Owners would buy compact Japanese trucks and customize them, building a vibrant masterpiece, complete with bright colors, graphics and lowered suspension.  As that trend faded, sport trucks picked up the slack – the 1990s gave us the famed GMC Syclone and Ford F-150 Lightning and while GMC didn’t give the Syclone a second generation, the memory of it gapping a Ferrari down the quarter mile still lives with many of us.  The Lightning soldiered on until 2004 and then, the sport truck was essentially dead.  Enter the Maverick Lobo, new for 2025 – can it pick up the mantle?

The Fine Print: Ford wanted us to try out the Maverick Lobo so badly they dropped one off with a full tank and said we could go nuts for a week making howling sounds all over the backroads of North Carolina.

Ford's popular Maverick has been on the market since the 2022 model year, sharing Ford’s small unibody platform with the Bronco Sport and Ford Escape, built at Ford’s facility in Hermosillo, Mexico.  According to Ford, the majority of Maverick buyers are new to the brand and demand has remained strong through the 2025 revision and to continue cultivating that demand, they sought to diversify the Maverick line and landed on an option that fills a truck-sized hole in the market – the sport truck – specifically, the Maverick Lobo.

Our Carbonized Grey Metallic Lobo tester arrived looking clean and mean – the dark metallic grey with the black accents on the Lobo trim make this little truck look purposeful.  The Lobo adds a unique grille, unique front fascia, black badging and lots of black trim, but the best feature, by far, is the turbofan-style 19” alloys, finished in black, of course.  The wheels provide a distinct look to the Lobo and give it a great stance, further aided by the revised suspension, riding about a half inch lower up front and over an inch lower in the rear. 

Complaints about the exterior are few, chief among them being that the Lobo is only offered in four colors, only one of which is an actual color – Velocity Blue.  If Ford really wants to dive into the minitruck/street truck vibe, we’re going to need some legitimate colors, and Ford already has them in their catalog – Molten Magenta, Grabber Yellow, Eruption Green, Orange Fury and Grabber Blue.  Additionally, some optional graphics wouldn’t hurt either – the minitruck scene was where graphics first blossomed and it would be a cool throwback to offer some retro-inspired options here too.  Ford doesn’t hesitate to throw them on a Raptor, so why not a Lobo?

Inside, the Lobo is mostly Maverick, but sharpened up with trim, stitching and sportier seats.  Ford swapped in black Active-X trimmed buckets with two-tone stitching and the requisite Lobo logo that look great and are plenty comfy, but severely lacking in lateral support, especially for a car with a Lobo mode whose screen graphic depicts an autocross course.  The rest of the interior is largely carried over, which isn’t a great thing – Ford initially built the Maverick to a pricepoint and material quality suffered a bit as the design teams played with utilizing recycled materials to support sustainability, but the result is something that feels as cheap as the plastic bottle it was recycled from, tough to stomach in a $42k trucklet.  Fortunately, space remains a great feature of the Lobo and you can comfortably fit four adults into the tidy cabin.

What really sets the Lobo apart, is its performance – this little truck actually handles phenomenally well and is primarily limited by Ford’s oddball Goodyear tire choice.  Tires aside, Ford absolutely dialed the truck in with the lower stance, revised suspension and improved steering feel.  While the regular Maverick feels light and practical, the Lobo feels serious and buttoned-down.  It actively seeks out corners, which is something we haven’t said about a small pickup since, well, ever.

Powering the Lobo is the same 2.0L Ecoboost turbo four-cylinder that’s optional on the regular Maverick.  No horsepower bump or revised tune, which is a little disappointing, but power is still sufficient at 250hp and 277lbft of torque, now going to the ground through Ford’s QuickShift 7-speed automatic, which is essentially the Maverick’s eight-speed automatic programmed to ignore second gear under most driving conditions.  It’s also not particularly quick-shifting, so perhaps SkipShift would be a better name, but I digress.  Advanced AWD is standard for the Lobo, but one of the party pieces here is a twin-clutch rear drive unit that can send torque side-to-side for torque vectoring in Lobo mode, which actually helps this thing rotate like a Focus RS.

What’s not like a Focus RS is straight-line performance – the little 2.0L Ecoboost tries hard, but pushing the 3890-pound truck to sixty takes about six seconds and will boil on through the quarter mile in 14.5 seconds at 95mph.  For those keeping track at home, that’s still about a second adrift of the 35-year-old GMC Syclone.  Okay, so it’s definitely not fast, but feels quick and makes some really great turbo sounds.  Torque comes on strong at throttle tip-in and there are so many excellent drive modes where you can dial the performance up or down as you see fit.  Sport and Lobo were our favorites as they help the truck feel planted and even a little playful, which is something we’ve also never been able to say about a small truck.  Efficiency remains relatively strong at 23mpg in the city and 29 on the highway, so even with the performance upgrades, it doesn’t guzzle gas.

Starting at over $37,000, the Lobo isn’t cheap and our tester rings the register at over $42,000 equipped with Ford’s fancy 702A group, which adds Bang and Olufsen sound, dual-zone automatic climate control, ambient lighting, heated seats, heated steering wheel, power moonroof, Ford’s trick Pro Trailer Assist and a host of other equipment.  The Maverick started off as a budget-friendly option but has lost its way in that regard and the Lobo is no exception.  If Ford really wants to trot out an over $40k compact performance pickup, it should have the chops to match – give it the 2.3L Ecoboost out of the Mustang, the trick diffs from the Focus RS and an optional manual, plus some crazy graphics and fun colors.  Until then, this wolf is just a little bit more bark than bite.

Editor’s Note: Ford has hinted at an optional powerkit that would bump the Maverick’s power to 300hp and 317lbft of torque that may be coming soon.  Now we just need colors, graphics and a manual!