In the early 1970s, Ford Motor Company produced the Maverick, a compact car marketed as an affordable and efficient vehicle. However, demand for the Maverick was not as high as Ford had anticipated, and they ended up with a surplus of unsold cars. To deal with this surplus, Ford decided to store thousands of unsold Mavericks in the SubTropolis caves located in Kansas City, Missouri.
Owned by real estate firm Hunt Midwest, SubTropolis is a man-made underground complex of limestone mines, covering over 55 million square feet, and home to many companies that use the caves for storage and other purposes.
Ford leased about 25 acres of the cave complex, which was ideal for storing cars because the caves are naturally air-conditioned with temperatures between 68 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The cars were kept in the caves until they could be sold, which would have taken several years.
“Ford at one time used to store its Mavericks here,” said Ora Reynolds, president and CEO of Hunt Midwest. “The constant temperature and humidity [it’s 68 to 72 degrees year-round] are ideal for storing stamps and other products.”
The storage of Mavericks in the caves of SubTropolis has become something of a legend in the automotive world, with many car enthusiasts and historians fascinated by the thought of thousands of cars lying unsold underground for years.
Today, the SubTropolis complex is still in use, and although the Mavericks are no longer stored there, the story of their time underground remains a unique piece of automotive history.
(via COCKPIT)
So what happened to all those MAvericks that were stored for years? Who was buying "new" Mavericks years after production date?
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