- BODY: Road Race Replicas
- WHEELS: Vincent
- TIRES: Road Race Replicas
Pity the Ford Maverick, red-headed step child of the pony car class. It wasn’t a bad car, it was just sort of…unnecessary. Ford already had the Mustang and the Falcon, and while the Maverick was ostensibly a replacement for the Falcon, it always seemed to spend most of its tenure in the Ford lineup looking for a place to be useful. In later years it tried to be a little luxury car, but early on, the higher end models were trending toward the muscle end of the market, which is how we got the Grabber.
By ’68 when the Maverick was introduced, Detroit had some experience shoehorning big engines into little cars. The Maverick Grabber was powered by a potent 302 small block and could definitely hold its own in stoplight to stoplight racing. A pity, then, that Ford never went farther with it. That didn’t stop plenty of hot rodders from going where the corporate brass feared to tread! Plenty of Mavericks were seen on tracks back in the diz-ay hauling around big iron under the hoods, and if you could keep one of those going in a straight line, you had a good chance of winning the pink.
This “Grabber Green” version-an actual color offered on the real car-is one of the few bodies I purchased from the great Road Race Replicas as a kit. I actually think it was a better deal than one of their finished cars; not only was it a little cheaper, but it came with a huge array of options for putting it together; that kit came with 3 different types of hood scoops, 2 different blowers, and even a radical Hilborn style “organ pipe” fuel injection option: Cah-RAAZY cool! Not to mention that I like building cars, so I loved the opportunity to do it “Detroit style” and have it my way! What a deal!
I thought a blower might be just a bit much, so I opted for the dual-quad “tunnel-ram” option. I did a little detailing on the grille and tail lights, and add a single wide racing stripe for the roof and deck and a pair of thinner stripes down the sides to give it some texture. She’s fitted with a light brown Ultra-G chassis and a set of those never-can-go wrong-with-‘em Torque Thrust mags that Vincent insists on calling “Crager Sports.” A while ago I dressed it up even more with a set of Hoosier RWL tires, and damned if it isn’t almost as hot now as its favored brother, the Mustang!
As you might expect from a car with more engine than sense, it is very front-heavy and thus doesn’t handle well; but, it is wicked fast! She can be beat in the turns, but there aren’t many cars in my fleet that will outrun her in a straight line!
In today’s world where Mustangs are selling for $50,000, Chevelles for $75,000 and Chargers for $100,000+, the Maverick is a forgotten car that has slipped through the cracks of the collector market, and good ones still turn up at reasonable prices…but probably not for much longer! I can’t say I’ve ever wanted one, but now that I’m looking around for a new 1:1 scale toy, one of these little pocket rockets in “Grabber Green” doesn’t sound like a bad deal. You could do worse; think of those poor slobs still trying to make a “Mustang II” look cool!
My aunt had a brown one that was ugly as sin though these pictures make me reconsider that.
Interesting fact, the Maverick won’t accept anything bigger the the 302 unless you remove the shock towers.
That’s really interesting, I didn’t know that…but it does make me wonder how people have managed to bit big blocks in the since I know I’ve seen them. Subframing, no doubt….but with what?
I have seen wishbone, double “A” arm front suspension kits for classic Mustang, where the towers are removed, but I don’t know if those kits will fit the Maverick.