Why did you Decide to Own a Maverick?

It was Cheap and different. I hate Mustangs and i love torino's so the Maverick was the next best thing.

 

TexasJack,

If you are not happy with your Maverick, you need to sell it and move on to something that will make you happy. Putting it in a shed will just make things worse. Just my thoughts.

Jim

 

It has grown on me, i now own two, a 1972 sprint, in need of restoration and a 1972, 4 door 302 model, in need of some light body work.

 

I know I've already answered this once, but this time I'm going to be a little more serious.

My first venture into these wonderful cars was a 1970 Grabber Blue Maverick Grabber. It was when I was working for a restoration shop and I was going through cars right and left. I would buy an older car cheap, fix it up, and then a customer would see it sitting in the parking lot and make me an offer I couldn't say no to. Well, I was between cars at the time, the weather was turning cold and rainy, my '77 F-100 was out of state at the time being used by my father, and the motorcycle I was riding back and forth to work just wasn't cutting it. My neighbor had the car sitting in their side yard and I was tired of coming home drenched so I went over and talked to her about it. Well, long story short, I had myself a car to drive back and forth to work again once I fixed the 200 6 cylinder's blown head gasket. I found a later model grabber scooped hood for it and repainted everything back to the original Grabber Blue. Well, long story short, once again I had someone offer me much more than I had in it and off it went. Luckily I had my truck back once again by that time.

Well, fast forward a few years and many, many cars later. I got offered a light green '71 Comet 2 door as part of a trade that I took since I liked driving the Maverick and they were basically the same car. I drove that one without doing anything to it other than the bare minimum maintenance for a couple of years then gave it to my sister who in turn gave it to my brother after she was done with it. He later wrecked the car and sent it to the junkyard without letting anyone know.

Once again fast forward several years to the modern day. I'm sitting here at the computer trying to figure out what type of economical car to drive around town since my 390 powered '76 F-150 gets 10 MPG (loaded or unloaded, it don't care- it's going to get 10 MPG!) and started looking at VWs. After realizing that there is NO WAY I'm going to fit in one comfortably, I remembered the old Maverick and Comet I once had so I started looking at different sites to see what I could find. Well, I stumbled into this site and decided to stay for a while since I was looking into getting another one of these cars. Well, after thinking about it seriously, I decided on another Comet since they aren't seen as often any more and my search had begun. I bought my 1st Comet GT (the red car) from Mean Maverick and later won my 2nd Comet GT (the green car) as a second chance offer off of eBay while I was searching for a parts car.

Now the fun part begins, rebuilding the cars!

-Scott H.

 

id had a 87 mustang that had goten to fast to be smog leagle. i had goten a smog ticket and decided then and there that i was going to get something that was pre 74 so i wouldnt have to deal with smog. my friend told me he had a 72 grabber. i know what a maverick was but didnt know what the grabber package was. i wasnt a fan of the mav, but when i saw it with that hood and spoiler i was sold.

 

I bought my Maverick, so I could be just like Craig.

 

I just love the way the car looks. I saw the car for sale and wanted it. I had actually put a hundred down so the guy would hold it, but ended up not being able to buy it. So I was out a hundred bucks and didn't have the car. Shorty after that, the car was gone. About 8 months later when I had the money in hand, I looked through the white sheets and there was the Maverick. I ended up paying 300.00 less than the guy originally wanted. It was just meant to be. . I love my car.

 

I liked them when they were introduced in 1969 when I was just 11 years old. That is the year I started working on cars too. First car was a 56 Chevy, but then saw a 72 red grabber 302 on a car lot in 1974. Bought it, then traded it for my Stallion which I still own. Fastback styling, V8 option, cool striping, that just makes a winning combo in my mind. Love these cars, and they are a huge part of what I am.

 

I was looking for my first car, saw it, and loved it. It was awesome and unique (I hadn't heard of it before). I loved the styling (minus the big bumpers, but Im changing that). Two weeks later, I convinced my Dad to help me out on the bill. He was a mav man too (He and his brother had 3 mavs). I heard lots of cool stories and got an awesome car, and apparently, joined an awesome community of genuinely nice people just trying to help each other make their cars better

 

I worshipped Dyno Don's SOHC 427 Maverick Pro Stocker. Talked my dad into buying a new '71 Grabber. Lime green with a 200 six and 3 spd stick on the floor. Dad died a year later and mom sold the car due to $$ issues. When I turned 16, I took all my money and bought a yellow '72 Grabber, again with a 200 six floor shift (couldn't find a 302!). Always wanted a Boss 302 in that car. Sold it in '75 due to rust issues but missed it dearly.

At the tender age of 52, I bought another one and am doing a unibody up resto to Grabber clone status with, you guessed it, a stroked Boss 302. Some things just take a few years to come full circle, but cars keep you young at heart!

 

Well, my father and I were looking for a new project and we narrowed it down to a couple of Mavericks and a couple of (351W) Lightning trucks. I wanted the Maverick the whole time. Because, for one, it would go faster and, two, how many everyday people know what a Maverick is? And what will they say when they see one with 13" tires, a big scoop and a roll cage? And I think we're both happy we went with the Mav. Now I'm hooked, one of the best desicions of my life...

 

When I was 15, me & my pap went looking for me a cheap first car. Now my granny had already given me the only new car she'd ever owned, a '70 LTD(which I still have)but I wanted something else to drive so I wouldn't ruin the LTD. Looked at a '66 Comet 202 2dr sedan, '72 Chevy pickup, and a few others he said no to. But he liked the $400 '73 Maverick Grabber, complete with rusted out 1/4s, mud grip rear tires and a crashed fender. But it DID have a 302, buckets, and a floor shifted c4, which I liked. We bondo'd the 1/4s, put a front clip off a '70 on it, and had duals/glasspacks ran on it. A junkyard set of slots, and the finest Sparkomatic stereo WalMart had (complete with a 100W EQ and Pioneer 6x9s AND Pioneer TSX7s)had me rolling.
I always wanted a '66-67 Fairlane. This was a compromise. I didn't much care for Mavericks. I figured I'd find a good Fairlane body & put my motor/trans in it. Never happened.
Over the years, the Mavericks grew on me and I started looking for a better body, as my Grabber was badly rusted and had been tweaked in the front in the past. I found the 4dr '75 that was a v8/stick car. Traded a $300 Fairmont to it and busted the 3spd column that very day in front of my house. That car later got 3.55 gears, a Hayes clutch, rebuilt column, and an '85 GT intake/carb. Had a blast with it. Then put a 5.0/c4 in it w/150 shot NOS. Had a faster blast with it then. Somewhere after getting the 4dr I found the '72 Comet I've got now. I figured it'd make a nice street car while the 4dr was getting beat on at the track.
The parts cars just kinda showed up cheap at the right time, I was always driving or working on a Maverick/Comet so everyone around here calls me Maverick(even our pastor)and I just can't quit 'em. I wouldn't be "me" without 'em I guess. I told the wife if I died first to put a Maverick emblem on my casket, kinda tacky maybe, but cheaper than gettin' buried in one.

 

My son and I had just came off a father/son Camaro project that was a complete disaster. We bought n '81 Camaro that was in the process of becoming a "race car" and we thought we got a great deal on it. Not! Once we got it home, we began realizing what a mess we really had. It ended up completely stripped and sitting on jack stands for 6 months before we finally cut our losses and got rid of it. (The only thing we have left is a never fired .060 over 350 we rebuilt for the car and some used black carpet.) I promised my son and myself we would NOT make that mistake again.

So we began looking for a CAM/FB roller that we could put the engine in, and ultimately we ended up looking at late 80's early 90's cars. Son wanted a standard tranny, I really didn't care (std's are fun though!). Point is, the only thing we could find in our price range with manual trannys were V6 cars with blown engines. Unfortunately, we don't have a shop full of equipment and tools, or a big bank account, and the more I learned online about those cars, the more I realized a V6-V8 conversion was just asking for more expense, delay and frustration. Plus they are still subject to smog testing (in our county) and the high insurance of a 16 year old boy driving a CAM/FB as his first car.

At that point, I just stopped and hit the reset button by challenging myself with several questions...

• What if I was 14 again (i.e. sons age) with stars in my eyes about getting a "cool" first car?
• What if tempered that with the wisdom (such as it is) of a 42 year old adult who had gone through plenty of "car projects" through the years?
• (Basically, what if I felt like I did way back in the day, but knew what I know today?)
• What if I stopped letting "cash on hand" be the final determining factor of our car purchase? (maybe I take on side jobs to increase the budget?)
• What if we broadened our search beyond the obvious teenager car choices: Camaro, Firebird, Chevelle, Nova, Mustang, etc.?
• What if we didn't get a father/son "project" car at all, but got a car we could actually drive and enjoy and most of the time and tweak on when we wanted (rather than sit in the driveway and mock us every weekend)?

Answering those questions began to change things and our options starting looking brighter. We went to the second tier of "cool cars": short/wide trucks, El-Caminos, etc. But prices were still pretty high for what you get (IMO) and I kept thinking we MUST be missing something. There just has to be some kind of pretty cool car out there flying around under the radar. Something classic, relatively affordable, easy to work on, and fun to drive.

Then I remembered a little hot-rodded car we had seen when driving through a small town a few years ago. What was that...think, think...a Cyclone? No, that's not it. Caliente? No - but it was a "C" word. Hmmmm...Comet maybe? (Look online - yep that was it.) So we started looking for Comets. Well it didn't take us long to realize there aren't many Comets for sale, and the nice ones we did find were REALLY nice and really expensive. BUT, it was a short step from Comet to Maverick, and that's where we hit gold.

After looking online for months (eBay, CL, etc.) we kept seeing this hot little '72 Maverick pop up on the Dallas CL. It was in great shape but well out of our price range. Then one day it came up again at a price we could almost...almost...afford. So I opened up a dialogue with the owner. Short story: we both made some concessions and got the price down just enough to where it was a real possibility. I gave him a non-refundable (my choice) 10% deposit and he gave me about a month to get the rest of the money together. I took on some extra work and when all was said and done only had to get $400 out of savings. Thanks to the grace of God and help from my wife, we had earned all the rest!

You can check out our car on another thread so I wont take up this thread with all those details. Suffice to say it's pretty cool !!!

But my point is...WOW...once we started looking for Mavericks we were finding them all over the place, many in amazingly good shape (for their age) and they are selling for 1/2 to 1/3 the price of Camaros/Firebirds/Mustangs in comparable (or worse) condition. Plus, the parts are affordable, the cars are easy to work on, they are old enough to not worry about smog/emission testing, and insurance is very affordable. The Maverick is pretty much everything we were looking for in one neat package!

So even though I had a '76 Rally Sport and a '73 Z-28 in high school, and a '90 LX Mustang about 10 years ago, I'm now a convert to the Maverick. It is absolutely, hands-down, unquestionably the BEST VALUE in a classic muscle car, and now I see what some of you guys have 2-3-4-or more of these puppy's. If I had the money and room, I'd be snapping them up too!!!

 

For me I love the looks of one but also love the fact that it is different. Mustangs are nice but every rich guy seems to own one and you about have to be rich to own one nowadays anyway.
I don't have mine on the road yet and it will be a while before I have the money to do so but I know I will always have people asking what kind of car it is. lol
Heard enough of those stories on here to know that.
My 71 F100 was my 1st car/truck and my dad bought it new and gave it to me when I was 15 so I know about sentimentality about the 1st car.
clint

 

love

i remeber c-in some mavericks along the road before i was even 16, never knew what they were just liked them. At the time i loved chevelles and knew i could never afford one, but i have always been a fan of ford, so i felt like i was betraying them. Then, i found out that car in the fence row was a maverick i knew what i had to do. get one of my own. well as time went buy i had tons of trucks a few cars(2 camaros, exps- frogeyes and fox bodish, mustang). then one day for the heck of it i got on craigslist and BAM four hours away one for $750! went down there that sunday and drove it home. havent looked back yet. i still drive it today a year later. im still building a parts pile to get ready to drop a 4v cleveland in. its my baby!