Tom & Tammy Lee Hackmann’s ’72 Ford Maverick Grabber

We discovered Tom and Tammy Lee Hackmann’s Maverick Grabber at the Knott’s Berry Farm Ford show this past April. Two thousand Fords in our face, and this one won us over. We’d staggered around row upon row of all-original and restored Mustangs, T-birds, and ’40s gems, and then there it was. Just sitting there, practically alone. It was low, but not uselessly so, and of course the Cobra R rims gave us pause. Even the wannabe-anonymous color grabbed our eye. Terry McGean and I circled it for five minutes before we asked Tammy Lee why this Maverick looked so uncommonly good. Turns out that 2 inches were pie-cut out of each of the wheelwells, allowing the 3-inch slam to look a lot more congruous. And yes, it’s a real Grabber. All built for under 7 grand—including the price of the car!

Driving Impressions

Weeks later, Tom and Tammy Lee swung by the offices to allow us a quick spin. We photographed the interior about two months later, after the Maverick received a T5 overdrive-trans swap, necessitating a new driving impression. The shifter was sourced from a boneyard ’85 Mustang, but the lack of a tach meant I had to go by ear when shifting. The exhaust, by the way, sounds glorious: plenty nasty but not thrumming through the car to drive you out of your skull. It sounds like there are far more than 302 cubes under that little scooped hood—not bellowing and deep like a bigger mill, but certainly growly, with fangs bared. From many angles it bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain Montego of my acquaintance.

Unlike that Montego, this is one taut little package, and absolutely a perfect-sized car for bopping around LA: big enough that you don’t fear for your safety around leviathan SUVs, yet nimble enough that you can thread your way through the inevitable traffic stupidity encountered on the mean streets of the City of Angels.

Stomp on the gas and… hmmm. Well, you’re certainly accelerating, but there’s no neck-snapping romp like you’d hope, considering the 302/T5/3.73 combo that serves so well in countless Fox-body Mustangs. The power is linear but feels like it’s being held back. Tom at first blames the cam, but later says that he replaced his stock distributor with one he found on a boneyard Maverick. Even at 10 degrees initial, there was knock and ping higher up in the revs with my foot to the floor, so there will be a re-curve in Tom’s future no matter how you slice it.

In our initial encounter, the steering was vague: miniscule yet mandatory mid-bend corrections indicated strange things were afoot with the alignment. They were fixed second time out, and the fat Grant wheel thankfully needed only to be turned once per bend. The suspension, on the other hand, was a little more raucous. Dropping the works 3 inches and stiffening things up is bound to make things a little go-karty, especially in what is largely a home- engineered solution for a car that hasn’t really got a massive aftermarket following, and while we never felt like we were going to snap-oversteer, you could feel (and hear) simply everything that was happening. Around hard corners, we remained flat, with nary a screech of tire, and the late-model T-bird power seats kept us nicely planted and positioned. But in a small car like the Maverick, which tends to flex less simply because of its compact size, the ride is almost too hard: If it were ours, we would soften the spring rates, and maybe raise the whole package half an inch in deference to cruising comfort. The wheels and tires can clearly cope with everything else. (Hard to argue with the dramatic effect the visuals present, however.) And even though the brakes were part-newer-Maverick-part-something-else-all-boneyard, they felt OEM smooth and well integrated, with no nasty surprises. In all, a dramatic response to the “Dare to be Different” clarion call, one that has me re-thinking what I’m doing with my own big blue Ford-powered beast.