Bill Pierre Ford

FoMoCo announced in Dec. 2009 that it had more than 1,000 reservations for the 2011 Ford Fiesta six days after launching a new Web site that allows consumers to build, price and reserve the compact hatchback. Last week, FoMCo confirmed that it now has 6,000 reservations, with half of them from non-Ford customers and more than 100,000 handraisers showing interest in the new fuel-efficient Ford.

“The Reservations program is providing Ford with a better understanding of consumer preferences, Ford said in a statement. “Nearly 60 percent of customers are opting for high series models, and 65 percent are choosing the five-door hatchback. Among the top three color choices are Blue Flame and Lime Squeeze.”

“People saw the Fiesta come to life through the Fiesta Movement, a program where 100 young trendsetters drove a European-spec Ford Fiesta for six months, which created tremendous interest for the vehicle,” said Sam De La Garza, Fiesta brand manager. “That interest now has translated into 6,000 reservations from interested consumers who can build and price their Fiesta.”

Fiesta reservations can be made by visiting www.fordvehicles.com/2011fiesta or by texting “reserve” to 4Ford on an iPhone or BlackBerry.

As we were leaving Orlando yesterday, Drive On was haunted by an encounter with a particularly giddy Ford dealer. He had just come out of a closed-door meeting between executives and dealers, an upbeat session loaded with information about coming attractions at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention. Even though a planned Mercury small car got all the media attention, there was one new entrant that people couldn’t stop talking about – the 2011 Ford Explorer.

After a series of big introductions, with the new Taurus being the most recent, Ford has a secret weapon up its sheet-metal sleeve. The new Explorer is due to go on sale later this year, yet it hasn’t shown up at any of the auto shows. All we have to go on are a few slim details:

• It will be unibody, not another heavy, fuel-wasting body-on-frame design.
• It will come with an incredibly fuel miserly powertrain, the four-cylinder EcoBoost turbocharged engine.
• The look will probably roughly parallel the concept that Ford introduced at the Detroit auto show a couple of years ago, seen above, which was generally well received but didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

A game changer?

If the new Explorer could combine 30-mile-a-gallon performance with all the good vibes that go with Explorer that was American’s favorite family vehicle a decade ago, the brand could have its next mega-winner. Small crossovers are the hot segment — and the new Explorer would be right-sized at being just a little bigger.

Jalopnik says the new Explorer will have an updated version of the same chassis used on today’s Taurus, Flex and Lincoln MKS and MKT.  “It’ll be sized and shaped like an oversized, three-row (Ford) Edge … with the spoiler across the back and everything,” Jalopnik writes. There are few spy shots of the new Explorer tooling around the landscape.

Yet Drive On can’t figure out why Ford is keeping the new Explorer under wraps for so long. The Dearborn crew has one last chance to roll it out before a lot of eyes — the New York Auto Show in April. You’ll be the first to know what we see.