In 1965 Ford brought a Mustang to the top floor of the Empire State Building in an as-yet-unreplicated marketing stunt. This week, Ford will embark upon a similar quest for the Mustangs 50th anniversary celebration, following the trail blazed by creative Ford engineers two generations ago. But how do you get a modern muscle car to the top of an iconic skyscraper?
The first thing engineers had to do was figure out the differences between the 1965 Mustang they first brought to the top of the Empire State Building, and the 2015 Mustang convertible selected for this attempt. The 2015 model is longer, wider, and heavier, while the Empire State Building is, as expected, exactly the same (more or less).
This time though, instead of dividing the Mustang into just four pieces to fit into the building’s service elevator, Ford engineers had to divide the pony car into six separate pieces. To ensure a smooth transition from the bottom floor to the top, these dedicated engineers even built a mock-up elevator opening to ensure the pieces would fit.
There was more to the job than that though, as the engineers had to totally strip the body before cutting it up, painting it, and building a separate sub-frame to bring it altogether. It’s an amazing feat of engineering and marketing that only Ford has the guts to do, and we can’t wait to see the 2015 Mustang looking out over the Big Apple.