We unboxed our 2024 Can-Am Maverick a year ago and immediately subjected to the hardest abuse we could imagine. From the deserts outside Las Vegas, to the sandy washes of Yuma, Arizona, to our rocky backyard at Windrock, we did not hold back. The Mav R has been flipped, rebuilt, thrashed, and broken down, and it keeps coming back for more. So, after a year do we still love the mighty Mav R? Dive in to find out.
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SportsTranscript
00:00It's a new year! That means taking a look at the 12 months we've spent with our 2024
00:05Can-Am Maverick R. We'll go over what went well, what broke, what we loved, and most
00:10importantly what it's like to live with Can-Am's gnarliest side-by-side day in,
00:14day out. The Mav-R hit the market in 2023 and it instantly reset expectations and benchmarks
00:20for what a side-by-side could be.
00:22And it's fair to say that the Maverick R took us a little bit by surprise. Now in 2022,
00:27when Polaris released the RZR Pro-R, we were expecting that Can-Am would follow it up.
00:32Really though, we were just expecting a moon-boosted Maverick X3. But when the Maverick R hit,
00:37it was an even bigger hold my beer than we had been expecting. You see, Can-Am didn't
00:42just moon-boost a Maverick X3. No, they designed a rig from the ground up to take the fight
00:48to Polaris. That meant the crazy tall knuckle suspension, a super wide track, and 240 horsepower
00:56from a turbocharged triple that has bolts going through the engine to hold it together.
01:01Not only that, but Can-Am did away entirely with the idea of a continuously variable transmission.
01:06Where the Polaris RZR Pro-R uses a tried and true rubber-belt CVT, Can-Am thought outside
01:11the box on this one and they asked Rotax, who made the engine, to build them a dual-clutch
01:16transmission for the Maverick R.
01:18That's right. This thing has a 7-speed, paddle-shifted, dual-clutch transmission just like a supercar.
01:23It runs on gears and that means that you don't have any of that driveline slop that
01:27you get out of a CVT. The result is an open-class side-by-side that arguably shares more with
01:33a WRC car than it does with a Pro-R.
01:35And as if a dual-clutch transmission wasn't enough, the Maverick R has an anti-lag mode,
01:41which basically shuts down a cylinder so that that hole can focus on building boost so that
01:45you don't have any turbo lag. That's the kind of thing that we were used to seeing
01:48in like a Ken Block Gymkhana video or on some sort of insane hypercar, not on something
01:54that costs $40,000 and you can go down to your local dealership and buy.
01:58That got us super excited. Not only did it mean that the Maverick R was definitely going
02:02to be fast, but it also meant that side-by-sides are now a couple of degrees more serious than
02:07they had been up to this point.
02:09The fact that the Maverick R uses gears instead of a rubber-belt CVT showed that Can-Am was
02:13dedicated to the idea that this was a race machine right out of the box.
02:17Then there was that hilarious-looking tall knuckle suspension, which basically, the TLDR
02:22is that it lowers the roll center so that the Maverick R is much more stable in corners.
02:26Combine that with the DCT, the anti-lag, and the Maverick R's just kind of turned up
02:31to 11-ness in general, and that meant you got a super-sharp, super-focused machine that
02:36felt unlike anything we'd driven up to this point.
02:39Not only did the Maverick R bring a bunch of new tech to the table, it stayed tried
02:42and true to what always made side-by-sides great.
02:45We're talking about low weight, huge tires, locking differentials, and two feet or so
02:50of suspension travel.
02:51We were immediately smitten, we knew we had to have one, and that want only got sharper
02:56after Can-Am invited us out to the launch in the desert.
02:59Those pictures are epic, go to our website, check them out, Zach Bowman had the story.
03:02He came home giddy as a little kid.
03:05This is a man who is stone-faced, stoic, he's driven all sorts of insane cars, he's been
03:09around the block a bunch of times, very little gets to him.
03:12When he came home giggling like a little school girl about how awesome the Maverick
03:16R was, I knew that this machine was something else entirely.
03:19There's some magic here that works better than any other machine that I've been in.
03:23Lucky for us, Can-Am was happy to oblige, and 12 months ago, we signed the paperwork
03:28to get our very own 2024 Can-Am Maverick R.
03:31It was real.
03:32It was happening.
03:33The fastest side-by-side ever available to the public was coming to Knoxville, and was
03:37going to live in our shop, and basically be ours to do with what we pleased.
03:42In short, this was going to rule, and in many ways it did.
03:45But our year with the Can-Am Maverick R wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.
03:49Let me explain.
03:50So back in December of 2023, our Maverick R showed up at our local power sports dealer,
03:54and with a little cajoling, a little persuading, and copious promises that we wouldn't break
03:58anything or get in the way, they agreed to let us come down to the dealership and unbox
04:02our brand new Can-Am.
04:04That gave us an opportunity to get real intimate with our new toy right off the bat.
04:08We got to see how the Can-Am was screwed together, which meant that we were going to have a better
04:12idea how it all came apart when it came time to fix something.
04:15More on that in just a second.
04:17So after we got the Maverick R assembled and back to our shop in Knoxville, we realized
04:21a couple of things.
04:22The first was, we needed to drive it at full chat, at 10 tenths, immediately.
04:27The second thing was, the East Coast isn't a great place to do that in a 100 mile an
04:31hour, 80 inch wide side-by-side.
04:33Luckily though, we had a plan.
04:36Rather than drag the Maverick R to Windrock, our home park, in the dead of winter, we decided
04:40instead to drag it out west, because you see, we had a date.
04:44We met up with the guys from the Haggerty Drivers Club magazine to show them that this
04:48snarling, snorting, non-street legal side-by-side was actually the new cheap sports car.
04:53With Porsche 911s solidly into the six-figure range, even for a base model, there is nothing
04:59on sale that will touch the Maverick R's performance for the price.
05:02That trip ended up basically being hell on earth, for a few reasons.
05:06The weather was gross, the original story we had planned to do basically fell apart,
05:11we had to beg and borrow to get some spare tires to make sure that we could keep the
05:15story going, if we got a flat, oh, a piece of plastic trim flew off the Maverick R while
05:20we were towing it, we crashed the thing.
05:22So we're gonna cut to the footage now, of me in-towing the Maverick R.
05:25Seriously, with less than ten hours on our new baby, we rolled it end-over-end.
05:33And by we, I do of course mean Zach.
05:36Either way, we rolled over our brand new Maverick R, really before we'd even broken it in properly.
05:41And because it's a side-by-side, at first it seemed that it had shaken off the crash
05:45with little or no damage.
05:47Then we started digging a little bit deeper, and as we got it back on the trailer, we noticed
05:50a puddle of coolant.
05:52The crash had, unfortunately, poked a tiny little hole in the radiator.
05:56And remember a minute ago how I said we had to beg, borrow, and steal to get tires for
06:00spares?
06:01Well, the reason for that was that Can-Am was sending all of their spare parts to build
06:05as many Maverick R's as they could to get their brand new units to dealers so that people
06:10could buy them.
06:11Combine that with the low-volume nature of side-by-sides, and there just weren't spare
06:15parts to be had.
06:16We called every dealership within a hundred-mile radius and couldn't get a new radiator.
06:21Just couldn't.
06:23And I should note here, we're a media company.
06:25We got this rig from Can-Am.
06:27When we went to get our spare tires, we called Can-Am and asked them to ask around to dealerships
06:31to see who had one.
06:33If it hadn't been for their influence, we wouldn't have gotten them.
06:35And even with that, we called Can-Am when we broke the radiator, and they were like,
06:39well, we can't help you.
06:41That's not on Can-Am.
06:42It's just the nature of these machines.
06:44All that is to say, remember how I said that assembling the Maverick R was going to be
06:47valuable experience?
06:49Well, here that came.
06:50We wanted to keep driving the Maverick R. We had driven all the way out west to do so.
06:54Luckily, we had the Hagerty story in the can, but we needed to shoot another video.
06:58And importantly, I hadn't driven the thing yet.
07:00And I was not going to let anyone get away from that trip without me driving our brand
07:04new toy.
07:05The afternoon after we flipped our Can-Am Maverick R over, the front end was blown all
07:10over the parking lot of a day's inn in Yuma, Arizona, while we went to O'Reilly's
07:14to get water-welded.
07:15We weren't sure that this fix was going to work, but we had no other option.
07:18But J.B. Weld, it turns out, does the Lord's work.
07:21With our brand new, unobtanium, damaged radiator jammed full of parts store goo, it was time
07:26for me to drive it.
07:27Let's cut to that footage.
07:28Oh my God!
07:35Needless to say, all of that parking lot thrash, the trips to the parts store, and the anguish
07:40of having crashed our new baby melted away.
07:43This thing was a revelation.
07:45My first taste of the Can-Am Maverick R was bliss.
07:49Yes, there are other side-by-sides that make north of 200 horsepower.
07:53There are other side-by-sides that have unassailable competition records.
07:56None of them are in the same league as the Can-Am Maverick R.
07:59Sorry, just they aren't.
08:01The Mav-R's greatest trick, you see, is its ability to convince you that it's not
08:05a side-by-side.
08:06It doesn't accelerate or brake like a side-by-side, and its handling is precise and stable in
08:10a way that no other UTV can match.
08:13And also, we can't stress this enough, it has gears.
08:16We can only say it so many ways without you having experienced the Maverick R yourself.
08:20The Maverick R is to side-by-sides what the Mercedes Gullwing must have been to other
08:24sports cars in the 1950s.
08:26Yes, there are other things out there that pretty much do the same thing.
08:31And yes, the on-paper differences between the Maverick R and its competition aren't
08:35that big.
08:36But we're here to tell you that if you drive a Maverick R and then immediately hop across
08:39to its closest competition, it will feel like you got out of a Lunar Lander and into
08:44an Oxcard.
08:45Anyway, sorry, the Maverick R does things to my brain and I can't help but wax lyrical.
08:50Anyway, the crash in the desert did have one or two silver linings.
08:54The first was, Zach wasn't hurt.
08:56In the rollover, Can-Am's standard rollover protection system did its job.
09:00The unfortunate part is, that meant that it sacrificed itself to save Bowman's neck.
09:04Literally.
09:05There was a big kink in the roof bar, and that meant that it wasn't safe to use anymore.
09:10Now we're going to circle back to the whole early 2024 specter of Can-Am Maverick R parts
09:14availability.
09:15Needless to say, Can-Am didn't have an extra ROPS, and no one was building aftermarket
09:19solutions yet that were widely available.
09:21So what do you do?
09:22Our response was to call our friends at Thumperfab in Texas.
09:25Now Thumperfab makes all kinds of great armor, and sidesteps, and luggage racks, and everything
09:31you can imagine for any kind of side-by-side, and they had helped us out in the past with
09:35a different Can-Am.
09:36So we called them up and said, hey, we rolled over our Maverick R, any chance you guys have
09:40a roll cage for us?
09:42And they said, well funny you should ask, we really want to get one to market, but we
09:46haven't had our hands on a Can-Am Maverick R yet.
09:48You see where this is going, right?
09:50So on our way from Arizona back to our shop in Knoxville, we swung past Thumperfab's
09:55facility in Texas.
09:57They do all of their R&D, cutting, welding, fabricating, shipping, and sales out of a
10:02small warehouse in eastern Texas.
10:05So we left our Maverick R there so they could do their work.
10:08It meant we'd be without our new Ripper for a little bit, but it also meant that when
10:11we got it back, it would be prettier and safer than stock.
10:14Now keep in mind, dear viewer, when we left the Maverick R in Texas, we had had it for
10:19all of six weeks.
10:20To say that our first couple months with the Maverick R were a whirlwind is the understatement
10:25of the year.
10:26And the year just started.
10:27So what happened when we got the Maverick R back from Texas?
10:30We immediately took it to Windrock.
10:32And at Windrock, we discovered that actually, the whole thing out west wasn't really necessary
10:38because we'd been entirely wrong about the Maverick R's use case on the east coast.
10:42Back in April, we found out that the Maverick R will rock crawl with the best of them.
10:47Actually, it'll rock crawl better than most of them.
10:49We expected gear lash in the rocks that would make it hard to control and hard to be smooth,
10:53and well, there just wasn't any.
10:55We expected it to be too wide and too long to be nimble enough to get over the jagged
11:00Windrock obstacles.
11:01And again, we were happy to be wrong.
11:04So that meant with our parking lot repaired radiator, our begged and borrowed tires, and
11:08the brand new fancy cage from Thumperfab, we were free to rip the Can-Am whenever and
11:12wherever we pleased.
11:14But then, life got in the way.
11:15We made stacks of content with the Can-Am right off the bat, and then, then we got busy.
11:20Press trips came and went, and new machines came into the shop that demanded their own
11:24reviews but weren't really something we could compare to the Maverick R.
11:28Worse than that for the Maverick R, we are fortunate enough to play with side-by-sides
11:32five days a week as our job.
11:34The drawback to that is that it means that on the weekends, we're working on projects
11:37in our garage, or hiking, or mountain biking, or just generally not being around side-by-sides.
11:42So we weren't taking the Maverick R out on the weekends to use it for its intended purpose
11:46because, well, we already did that, and we'd been busy all week, and we're tired, and
11:51look, it's a bad excuse.
11:52We just weren't driving it.
11:53Sure, we got a Razer Pro-R into the shop back in the fall, and we took the Maverick R out
11:58so that we could compare the gnarliest two open-class side-by-sides, and it was a hoot.
12:02But we still didn't really get to use the Maverick R as much as we had hoped.
12:06Sure, we could have tried to take it racing, and actually, we really wanted to try and
12:10take it racing, but with three staffers, and a limited budget, and a lot to do, it just
12:14didn't happen.
12:15And so the Maverick R sat.
12:16It sat in a corner of our shop.
12:18It was the most amazing side-by-side ever made, $40,000 rocket ship.
12:22It collected dust.
12:23It got welding spatter on it from other projects we were working on.
12:27So embarrassing to admit.
12:28But it does lead us nicely into what went wrong with our Maverick R during our year
12:33of ownership.
12:34So let's start that conversation with problems that weren't caused directly by us being goons.
12:40The first ill was parts availability.
12:42The only way that we were able to get spare tires for our trip out west was because we
12:46are a well-connected media outlet.
12:48If we hadn't have had some pull with Can-Am, we would not have gotten those tires, and
12:52that would have meant trying to do the story without spare tires, and if we had gotten
12:56a flat, we'd have been up the creek.
12:58So if we were just some guy off the street, we would not have been able to drive our Can-Am
13:02as hard as we wanted to because if we popped a tire, we're walking home.
13:05And even with our pull with Can-Am, the little plastic cover I mentioned that flew off while
13:09we were trailering, we couldn't replace it.
13:11They didn't have one, none of the dealerships had one, and we still have just a gaping hole
13:15in our dashboard.
13:16In fact, it took us until the summer to find a replacement radiator.
13:20Like, we drove around with JB Weld jammed in our radiator for like six months because
13:24that's how backed up the parts supply was.
13:26And again, that's not really on Can-Am.
13:28You can't blame them for trying to throw all the parts they can at machines they're
13:32going to build and sell to customers, but it meant that we really had to do some workarounds
13:36and it's lucky that we had a shop or we wouldn't have been driving our Can-Am for
13:39most of the time we owned it.
13:41And then last fall, because it had been sitting, the Can-Am started to get real grumpy when
13:45it was cold.
13:46It was hard to start, and when it did start, it idled rough and it took a real long time
13:50for it to warm up.
13:51It was clear that it wasn't happy.
13:52And then, one morning, on a chilly, foggy day, we were getting together for a big company
13:57ride, we trailered the Maverick R out to Windrock, and when we started it up on the trailer,
14:01it was grumpy as it normally was, and then it died during warmup and it just wouldn't
14:06restart.
14:07Like, it just wouldn't.
14:08We had to go find another rig to take on the ride because the Maverick R had just laid
14:11down on us.
14:12We had to winch it back up onto the trailer.
14:14Needless to say, that was a little scary.
14:16The issue, it turned out, was fouled spark plugs, and mechanically, that's a pretty
14:20simple solve.
14:21The problem is, with the Maverick R, it involved removing most of the back half of the car
14:25to include, like, the intercooler and some radiator parts and all that kind of jazz,
14:30and just to replace three spark plugs.
14:32Like, that's a half a day.
14:33We're never getting back.
14:34And obviously, the lesson there is that high horsepower, big boost, high-strung machines
14:39like this hate sitting.
14:40And worse than sitting, they hate being started up, moved from one place to another, and then
14:44shut off, and not warmed up properly, and not driven the way they're supposed to be
14:48driven.
14:49Like, they just don't work that way.
14:51They'll foul plugs the same way a sport bike will, right?
14:53Like, you gotta take it out and give it the old Italian tune-up every once in a while,
14:56or it's gonna lay down on you, and that's what happened with our Maverick R.
14:59The other problems, the rollover protection system, the radiator, and some broken plastics
15:04from the crash, that was all our fault.
15:06Nothing on Can-Am, nothing really on the Maverick R. I mean, we drove it like goons, and we
15:10paid the price.
15:11So with all that said, what's it like to live with a Can-Am Maverick R for a year?
15:15Well, I'd like to say that it was pretty easy, given that most of the things that went
15:19wrong with ours were preventable, and our fault.
15:22But then, that's kinda the point.
15:24Sure, we could've babied the big Can-Am.
15:25We could've driven it around everywhere at 5 or 6 tenths, avoided mistakes, never
15:29approached the limits, and had a trouble-free 12 months.
15:32That would've also made atrocious, boring content.
15:35And driving around at 5 or 6 tenths at half-throttle is realistically not what you buy a Can-Am
15:41Maverick R for.
15:42Why go out and buy the baddest open-class side-by-side that you can get your hands on
15:46if all you're gonna do is futz around at 35 or 40 miles an hour?
15:49It doesn't make sense.
15:50This thing doesn't just encourage tomfoolery like it craves it.
15:54It inhales chicanery and breathes out bliss.
15:58Sketchy ideas are the blood that courses its steel veins.
16:01So where does that leave us?
16:02Well, living with a Can-Am Maverick R, and using it for its intended purpose, is a high-maintenance
16:07experience.
16:08It's not cheap, and you're always gonna be fussing with it.
16:10It's the same as, like, driving a Porsche 911, or a BMW M3, or riding a Ducati 916,
16:16or a Ducati Panigale, is always going to be a more maintenance-intensive experience than,
16:20like, riding around on a DRZ400, or driving a Camry to the coffee shop.
16:24You're gonna hit snags, and the snags will cost you.
16:27But here's the thing.
16:28All the things that went wrong with our Can-Am Maverick R, all the inconveniences we experienced,
16:32we would live them again in a heartbeat.
16:35Only, if we had our year to do over again, we would drive our Can-Am Maverick R every
16:39chance we got, forget all the excuses, forget anything else we had to do, probably get fired
16:43from our jobs, because it is that good.
16:46The joy that this thing provides is so intense that you stop caring about anything else.
16:50You will feed it any amount of dollars it wants, and endure any amount of convenience
16:55it requires, because the machine is just that good.
16:59So there you have it.
17:00That's what it's like to live with a Can-Am Maverick R for a year.
17:03Yes, it's high-maintenance.
17:04No, it's not cheap.
17:05But yes, it is probably the most fun you can have on four wheels, out of a dealership for
17:09$40,000 or so.
17:11Thank you ever so much for watching.
17:13As always, you can find news, reviews, and buyer's guides, including one on the Can-Am
17:17Maverick R, on our website at UTVDriver.com.
17:20You can catch us on all the social media channels seven days a week.
17:24We will see you there.