When I had the amazing opportunity to test drive a vanilla Ford F-150, and a Ford Maverick Tremor, I did not realize that I would be just getting half of the true experience for each.
I have had the previous pleasure of getting the chance to give the behemoth that is the Ford F-150 Raptor a spin, and I was simply floored by the raw size, power, and presence that the vehicle dealt. However, it was immediately apparent that that vehicle was not designed for me. As someone who lives in New York City with no need for 75% of the F-150’s capabilities, I knew that while it would very well serve someone that sits in the niche it occupies, I would be doing it a disservice.
Enter the 2024 Ford Maverick. For every outrageous and ostentatious feature of the F-150, the Maverick had one economical and encompassing. Instead of the large road-commanding size of the F-150, the Maverick was sleek, slim, and much more manageable in the city. It also had a much better miles-per-gallon than the 5.0L V8 engine of the F-150, which allows for better savings in the long run, and a more feasible experience driving in traffic. I drove the heck out of the F-150, but the whole time, it felt like an exotic amusement park ride. With the Maverick, I felt like I was in a vehicle that I could actually see myself purchasing and using on the daily.
A wild Maverick, courtesy of Ford
As a result, my pursuits with the Maverick were much more tame than those with the F-150. I took it to the supermarket, and loaded bags upon bags of food into the pickup bed. Groceries that I was usually stuffing into the deep crevices of my daily driver’s trunk were now comfortably seated beside each other. I dropped my brother to work, and we jammed out listening to our favorite tracks through the vehicle’s excellent surround sound speaker system, and didn’t feel any of New Jersey’s notorious potholes due to the impressive suspension. The interior was comfortable and not too complicated with insane features and buttons and dials; it got the job done. Wired CarPlay and Android Auto was also a big plus.
When it came to being a car, the Maverick did a pretty decent job. I was able to park it in downtown Manhattan in a regular parking space, and did not have to accommodate for big wheels or protruding grilles. However, it really shone when it came to being a truck. I took for a late night drive to Long Beach in Suffolk County, and on roads that were unevenly paved or not paved at all, and that twisted and winded through a foggy forest, the Maverick kept its cool and its traction. The Tremor package that was included helped in the off-road bits, with better suspension and Trail Control.
Suburban bliss
The auto high beams automatically illuminated when I came to a difficult hill or sharp turn with limited visibility. Finally, on the beach, it remained an excellent place for everyone to huddle in and talk while cranking the heat up (since it was February and we had no business going to a beach in the winter).
In all, the 2024 Maverick is the people’s truck. With less flash and more bang for buck, it provides a safe economical option that doesn’t sacrifice functionality, and will no doubt save you the $100k+ that the F-150 can surmount to be. This is not even considering the fact that the Maverick offers a hybrid option, which will save you even more on gas with each trip. As the F-150’s smaller brother, it has fewer bells and whistles, but all of the charm, and all of the potential to make a great trip even greater.
Ford’s line up at the 2023 Rebelle Rally, the Bronco Raptor, the Mustang Mach-E Rally, and the Bronco WildTrak
Who needs roads when you can build them yourself?
That’s exactly what these ladies did at the eighth annual Rebelle Rally, a 1600-mile rally through the West Coast’s many ecosystems, and the first women’s off-road navigation rally raid in the United States. Women of all ages and backgrounds came to the Eastern Sierras last week to kick off the eight-day rally, which rewards quick thinking and resourcefulness rather than putting pedal to the metal.
This year, 64 teams consisting of driver-navigator duos competed in the rally, where GPS and cell phones are all but nonexistent as the women are tested on their navigation and driving abilities. Winning the rally is less about speed and more about points: those who can find their navigation markers with as few setbacks as possible gain more points that are added to their total.
The Rebelle Rally puts these ladies through rough terrains and 12-hour long days of driving all the while getting what little rest they can while sleeping in tents where temperatures sometimes drop to a bone-chilling 14 degrees overnight. Trudging through one giant treasure map in the middle of weather extremes using old-school paper maps is hardly a walk in the park, but for Laura Wanlass, it might come close.
Maria Guitar, Laura Wanlass, Kaleigh Miller and Bailey Campbell prepare their cars during the Rebelle Rally Prologue
“It’s nice to be out of society. You’re truly present, you have no other thoughts, nothing creeps in,” said Wanlass, who daylights as a lawyer in Washington state. “Then you go home and you can’t remember anything of your past. You can’t remember the password to your work computer. It’s that fast.”
Wanlass is one of several women sponsored by the Ford Motor Company this year. An official Silver Sponsor of the rally, Ford has competed for four consecutive years at Rebelle, with five teams racing under the carmaker this year.
Although Wanlass might find it difficult to remember her day-to-day life outside of the rally, it’s for good reason: she and her fellow teammate Maria Guitar finished third and second overall in the 4×4 class in 2021 and 2022 respectively. This year, the two finished third overall, in the Bronco Raptor.
“We’ve been on the podium for the last two years,” explained Guitar, a day trader from Columbus, Ohio. “You start dreaming weeks and weeks and weeks out.” Guitar, who navigates as Wanlass drives, said this is the first year they’re sponsored by Ford, but that hasn’t made a difference in their strategy.
“We want the most, always. We’ve placed that pressure on ourselves, and so we have to just not worry about it and focus. Bring your best, do your best.”
The Ford Mustang Mach-E leaving the campsite to start in the Rebelle Rally Prologue
Ford brought four of their successful Bronco and Bronco Sport vehicles for another multi-year win after the Ford Bronco Sport scored a historic three-peat win last year in the X-Cross class. Shelby Hall and Rori Lewis finished fifth in the Bronco Raptor, and Jessica Moore and Melissa Clark came in first in the rally’s X-Class division, competing in the Bronco Sport.
Driver Karisa Haydon and navigator Trista Smith, who were the 2022 Rebelle Rally Cross Rookies of the Year and Stage 7 winners, moved up to the 4×4 class in the Bronco WildTrak this year. They finished sixth in the new division.
“We were rookies to the purest form. We had never driven off-road,” said Smith. “We trained the entire year for it but before that, we’re not super offroaders, we were not into motorsports and had no navigation experience whatsoever. So we just really dove in. And it allowed us to do really well last year.”
The duo explained they’re keeping to the strategy they employed in last year’s Rebelle, namely, how efficient they were on the road– or lack thereof. Haydon, a stay-at-home with a pair of daughters, ages two and four, got her time management skills while working in management at Starbucks. “I live and die by that kitchen timer,” she said as Smith joked she would get out of the car to see if they had reached their marker to receive points. “I’m the time controller in the vehicle. I’m like ‘We need to leave now to hit the next marker, and we only have a few minutes at this one.”
Haydon and Smith’s communication skills stem from their long cultivated ongoing friendship: while Smith and her family– who have been living nomadically for years– were driving through Portland, Oregon on a rainy day when their car broke down. Smith’s husband called his friend, Haydon’s husband, for a new alternator, who had one but was away. Haydon went to save the day herself, delivering the alternator and inviting the Smiths back to her home to fix the car.
Kaleigh Miller and Bailey Campbell prepare the Mach-E ahead of the Rebelle Rally
“So we just sat there and had some rum and coke in the garage,” said Smith. “And we hit it off and went from having no experience to doing trainings to going from zero to getting sponsored by Ford. It’s incredible.”
In addition to the four Bronco gas-powered cars at this year’s Rebelle Rally, Ford is also showcasing a new car that has yet to be released to the public. Bailey Campbell, a driver, and her navigating counterpart, Kaleigh Miller, are pioneering the new all-electric Mustang Mach-E Rally for the first time ahead of its 2024 launch for the mass market.
“The range thing is completely different from gas mileage. I think that’s probably the biggest change for me,” Campbell said upon her and Miller’s return from a day of driving during the Rally’s prologue, a practice day for competitors before the points start to matter. “That and the lack of noise. It was 50 percent laughter today because we’re wearing helmets and all you hear is us breathing and not the gas.”
“This is my first time in the car, let alone electric,” said Miller, a CPA living in Tucson, Arizona who has competed in five of the last eight Rebelles. “So we were in the car yesterday, testing out all the buttons. I think for the general public, it’s a pretty cool way to test out the range and the general environment.”
There’s no better way to test the range of an all-electric car than pushing it to its limit in the middle of nowhere on a single charge. Both the nearly 130 competitors and the rally organizers and staff are lodging at secluded campsites in three different areas of California throughout the rally, miles from the nearest outlet.
Rebelle Rally founder and race director Emily Miller
To facilitate not only the Mach-E but also four Rivians, the Rebelle Rally enlisted the help of a new ingenious charging solution as brought by Salt Lake City-based Renewable Innovations.
Rebelle Rally founder and race director Emily Miller– herself a renowned driver, having won several momentous rallies and instructed over 8,000 people how to drive and navigate off-road– lauded the rally’s efforts to stick to sustainability in every aspect of the race, including the rally’s push to secure green hydrogen to charge the Mach-E and other fully electric vehicles. You can read more about the use of green hydrogen and check out our other coverage of the Rebelle Rally here. Also read about the fun we had in the Ford F-150 Raptor R here.
“We have 800 kilograms of green hydrogen. It’s a lot of hydrogen, but it’s what it takes just to power these electric vehicles remotely and rapidly and to power the base camp as our backup to get down the road,” Miller said, explaining how Georgia and North Carolina are the only two locations in the United States to find such green hydrogen at that scale.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E charging through energy provided via green hydrogen
Given the difficulty in sourcing and the financial constraints in securing such a large amount of green hydrogen, Miller explained that she and her team quite literally hit the books, putting pencil to paper and calculating how much energy the Mach-E and other electric vehicles would require throughout the Rebelle Rally’s course.
“It’s every type of temperature, it’s every type of terrain, every altitude. We will go from 10 feet above sea level to 10,000 feet,” Miller said. “People tell me that they want their kids to do this. If they want their kids to do it someday soon, I was gonna have to figure it out. And it’s not easy and nobody is doing a long-distance rally like this.” In response to the push for more sustainable modes of transportation and referencing California’s ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, Miller said, “This thing’s not going to happen unless we figure this component out.”
And the competitors love that not only are they pushing themselves to the limit, but the organizers behind Rebelle are as well. “It’s also a bigger electric field than they’ve ever had before,” added navigator Kaleigh Miller. “But a lot of technologies have evolved over time. Tents now are clicks and we’re asleep that much faster. In this rally, every second counts, rest and drive.”
Designed for the brand’s younger, more global customers, the new Nautilus has a greater focus on technology, design, and powertrains ideal for those those craving -you guessed it- Sanctuary.
With luxury vehicles becoming more of the norm, and models that were once high-end becoming more affordable than ever, it is clear that luxury features have begun to bleed into the realm of cars purchased by the average joe as parts become cheaper and more commonplace. How then, will it be possible for manufacturers to draw the line? Wealthy clients clamor for comfort, status, and exclusivity, and yet every expensive vehicle seems rather cookie-cutter.
Fashion and car designs were the focus last week Wednesday at Genesis House in NYC!
For the first time since 2019, The New York International Auto Show returned to the Javits center in New York.
Get ready to star in your own music video, because between the sexy outfits, trendy accessories, and a BRAND NEW Range Rover (yes, you read that right!) White Fox is basically Santa this year.
Clearly all we want for Christmas is to win the brand’s Huge Holiday giveaway, which includes a brand new Range Rover Evoque and a $1,000 White Fox voucher to stock up on all our favorite pieces.
From steamy New Year’s Eve outfits to athleisurewear, White Fox is a one-stop shopping experience. Plus, you know, we really could use a new car.
The contest runs through Dec. 24, just in time to make our holiday dreams come true. Now, who said there is no such thing as Christmas magic?
The winner will be contacted on Christmas Day. To enter the contest, click here.
A private launch event in NYC set the stage for the debut of the latest version of Lincoln’s flagship SUV, including new Black Label variants.
Luxurious moments were found this weekend in the Hamptons in the enchanting Cadillac CT4-V.
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