Ford stored surplus Mavericks in an underground cave in Kansas and it turned out to be a great decision

Ford once made an incredible decision with surplus Mavericks that the company didn’t know where to store.

The automaker was running out of ideas – and storage – so it simply parked these cars in an underground cave in Kansas.

So far, so… strange.

But the situation became even worse when this strategy completely backfired.

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How these Ford Mavericks ended up here

Back in the 1970s, Ford began using SubTropolis, a network of tunnels in Kansas City, Missouri, to store some of its cars, primarily to protect them from bad weather.

During the entirety of production of the Maverick, the American manufacturer assembled the car at its plant in Claycomo, which is also part of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Ironically, the Maverick’s commercial success became a bit of a problem because it led to excess production in an area where you can’t really park showroom-ready cars outside due to bad weather.

So Ford decided to simply park them in a cave.

The thing is, leaving the cars outside may not have been a great idea, but storing them in a cramped cave was perhaps just as bad.

As a result, most of these cars eventually became unsellable write-offs.

What happened to the Maverick?

The Maverick, as people in the 1970s knew it, no longer exists.

The 1970s Maverick was marketed and sold as a ‘compact car’, but it was actually more like a coupe.

Some people would even call it a muscle car, mostly because it vaguely looked like a Mustang from the same era.

Production ended in the late 1970s, but Ford resurrected the Maverick nameplate for a completely different vehicle in 2021.

Today’s Ford Maverick is a compact truck, pictured above, that’s actually one of the cheapest trucks you can buy in America.