[Xist]

The Maverick seats five, has an eight-inch touch screen in the dash and gets 40-miles to the gallon in city driving. It will be one of the tiniest trucks in the U.S. At just under 200-inches long -- about 16.6-feet -- the Maverick is only six-inches longer than a Toyota Camry and more than four-feet shorter than Ford’s F-250 Super Duty truck.

The Maverick’s starting price of $19,995 is about $1,250 below a base Honda Civic compact car. It’s even cheaper than a typical used car, which hit a record of $22,568 in May, according to researcher Cox Automotive.

The $21,250 Civic is rated up to 32 city / 42 highway. I would like to see ecomodders having their way with each of them!

Unlike Ford’s money-losing entry-level offerings of the past, the company says Maverick will still manage to make a buck thanks to sharing many components -- including that hybrid drivetrain -- with its mechanical siblings in the lineup; the Escape and Bronco Sport compact sport-utility vehicles. Another contributing factor: Ford is making the Maverick at a factory in Mexico, where workers’ wages are a fraction of their U.S. counterparts.

The Maverick’s maximum payload of 1,500-pounds -- which Ford says equals 37 bags of mulch -- is less than half of what can be loaded into the back of an F-150.

Ford Takes Aim at Import Crowd With Small Pickup Under $20,000

Is this the compact pickup for which many of us have been hoping?