Today's car of the day is Tiger Wheels' 1970 Ford Maverick.
The Ford Maverick was a mid-size car manufactured from April 1969-1977 in the United States, Canada, Mexico and from 1973-1979 in Brazil — employing a rear wheel drive platform dating to the original 1960 Falcon. Originally marketed as a 2-door sedan at an initial price of USD$1,995, the Maverick was designed to be inexpensive to manufacture and maintain.
The name "maverick" was derived from the word for unbranded range animals, and the car's nameplate was stylized to resemble a longhorned cow skull.
Tiger Wheels are not easy to come by, and this one recently joined my collection as Dave Weber has scaled back his own collection. Tiger Wheels came out around the turn of the century and were mostly marketed in Puerto Rico at the height of the diecast racing craze that hit that island in the late '90s. About a dozen castings were ultimately produced, and the company's ending is shrouded in mystery. No one knows exactly what happened, though it is thought that the company closed up shop when the racing craze petered out.
The Maverick's styling featured a long hood, fastback roof, and short deck on a 103 in (2,600 mm) wheelbase — and featured simple and inexpensive to manufacture pop-out rear side windows rather than roll-down windows.
Internal and external resistance to a "Mustang replacement" meant that the Maverick would actually be replacing the Ford Falcon. The Falcon's sales had already been decimated by the introduction of the Mustang in 1964, and despite a redesign in 1966, the Falcon was left without a place in the Ford lineup. The Falcon was discontinued early in the 1970 model year after a few thousand units were produced as basically warmed over 1969 models, but the Falcon name was used on stripped down versions of the mid-sized Ford Torino during the second half of the 1970 model run.
Nearly 579,000 Mavericks were produced in its first year. This rivaled the record-setting first year of Mustang sales (nearly 619,000), and easily outpaced the Mustang's sales of less than 200,000 in 1970
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