The Ford Maverick has been a smash hit for the brand thanks to its combination of affordability, efficiency and practicality, but the compact pickup is a little small for some things.
That includes loading bicycles into the 4.5-foot bed, which is too short to accommodate many without putting the tailgate down.
Ford has suggested owners build their own racks with wood and fork mounts that utilize slots in the Flexbed inner surface, but now it’s come up with one of its own.
Ford has received a patent for a “Rotatable Bicycle Fork Mount For A Vehicle” it has designed, which is depicted in a “small pickup truck” that looks a lot like the Maverick in the included sketches.
The trick is that the fork mount is installed in a front corner of the bed and can be rotated diagonally, which provides more than six feet of length.
The downside is that only one bike will fit, but the tailgate can stay closed so that the rest of the bed can be used for additional cargo. That would include the front tire, which the patent doesn’t address with its own mount. Ford hasn’t announced any plans to offer the feature, and the patent is no guarantee that it will, but the Maverick isn’t the only potential application for it.
The Ranger has only a slightly larger five-foot-long bed, while many F-150s have 5.5-foot beds. But there’s also the upcoming Maverick-sized electric pickup that will be launching next year. Ford hasn’t confirmed the length of its bed, but it doesn’t look much, if at all longer than the Maverick’s on the camouflaged prototypes that have been publicly revealed.
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Ford has revealed that electric truck will also have a frunk and you can expect it to be equipped with a variety of clever features and storage solutions that take advantage of its unique platform. Even if it doesn’t use the built-in fork mount, Ford will probably come up with something.
The Bronco Sport SUV, for instance, was designed to fit a bike inside with the rear seats down and Ford sells accessory fork mounts for just that reason.
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