The all-season tires on the 2025 Ford Maverick Lobo don’t grip well enough, so we put on summer tires and took the truck to the test track. On our 300-foot skidpad, the Lobo’s grip increased from 0.85 to 0.90 g when we put Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires with greater grip. The $1240 we spent on summer tires reduced the Lobo’s stopping distance by 24 feet, from 188 feet to 164 feet at 70 mph. We focus on the test results at Invoice-Pricing’s Testing Hub. We’ve been putting cars through rigorous tests since 1956 to gather objective evidence to support our personal opinions. Sometimes, just a basic set of tires is enough to win after all. A good example of this is the 2025 Ford Maverick Lobo. The Lobo is meant for jumping over cones at autocross events. Ford changes the cooling system, adds a driving mode, and lowers the number of cogs in the slushbox from 8 to 7 in the standard Maverick. It sounds good, right? The base model comes with Goodyear Wrangler Territory HT all-season tires, but Ford did not offer a better set. So, the Lobo’s performance on the test track was almost identical to its regular brothers’. Both cars finished the quarter-mile in 14.5 seconds at 95 mph. The Lobo got to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds, which was just 0.1 seconds faster than a Maverick XLT FX4. Things got a lot stranger after the drag show. The Lobo’s 0.85 g of grip on the skidpad was only a little better than the XLT FX4’s 0.82 g, but braking was the big issue. The Lobo needed a total of 188 feet, which is 16 feet more than the XLT FX4, to come to a stop from 70 mph. If you aren’t selling cones at the autocross, this news isn’t very good. We knew that we needed tires with a better grip, so we went out to look for summer tires that would fit the Lobo’s stock wheels (225/55R-19). Out of three choices, we picked a set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires for $1240. We bought four front tires made specifically for the Porsche Taycan, but they weren’t standard. You should be creative when Ford doesn’t offer a factory choice. No matter what, the Michelin tires that were made for Porsche worked well. The Skidpad grip reached 0.90 g, a better result for a gadget designed to handle sharp turns. Lobo, dressed for summer, was better at braking than the last two Mavericks, coming to a stop from 70 mph in 164 feet. Also, the Lobo reduced the stopping distance from 100 mph to 337 feet, a reduction of 41 feet. The biggest problem was the weight. The Michelins added 4 pounds of unnecessary weight at each corner, raising the curb weight from 3,890 to 3,906 pounds. The Lobo with Michelin tires lost some of its acceleration, which could be because the tires made it heavier. The 60-mph sprint time went up by one-tenth to 5.9 seconds, and the 5-to-60-mph passing time also went up by one-tenth to 6.8 seconds. It’s an even race when both vehicles hit the quarter-mile mark. Also, the tires were louder than the ones on the stock Lobo. Our sound level meter showed 24 sones at 70 mph, compared to 23 for the stock Lobo. Even though it seemed like a bad idea and a costly one, putting summer tires on the Lobo gave it the boost it needed right away.
