I still long in my heart for a pickup that is as small as possible while having an 8 ft bed, but honestly once you also need to take children with you wherever you go, the compromise of a shorter bed with a good sized back seat (to accommodate car seats) really begins to make a lot of sense.

I ended up just attaching a trailer hitch to my Chevy Volt and buying a lightweight 8ft trailer. As long as I just need to move big and not heavy, it's perfectly adequate, and the mileage when I'm not hauling is a lot better.

And it cost me about $2k while keeping me out of the insane used truck market.

> A Maverick is just an open air hatchback.

Not always. Sometimes it's a weird little muscle car platform.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Maverick_(1970–1977)