What better way to celebrate 50 years of Ford Mustang than putting the all-new model on top of New York City's Empire State Building? 1,050 feet (320 meters) above the streets of Manhattan, on the landmark building's 86th floor observation deck, the Blue Oval will display a 2015 Mustang Convertible in the same manner it did in 1965 with the first-gen model.
In order to make this happen, Ford turned to longtime expertise supplier DST Industries. “This week, the band is getting back together as Ford and DST bring the all-new Mustang to the Empire State Building to honor 50 years on sale,” said Dave Pericak, Mustang chief engineer. “We’ve taken the new Mustang to new heights of technology and refinement, so we decided to take it to new heights literally for this celebration.”
Because the deck is too high to reach with a portable crane from the street and the spire that towers more than 1,050 feet (320 meters) above the narrow deck makes helicopter delivery impossible, the engineers from DST Industries sectioned the car so that it could fit into the building's elevator.
The fabricators also built custom rolling carts and wooden crates for each section of the dismantled Mustang to be displayed on top of the Empire State Building. Each of the loaded carts was then weighed to ensure everything stayed within the weight limits of the elevator and the observation deck.
With several weeks of fabricating and practice behind them, and the crates on a truck and headed to New York, the DST crew is resting up ahead of some long nights this week assembling and disassembling the Mustang.
As for the Triple Yellow 2015 Mustang Convertible, it will be fully assembled and on display for visitors between April 16 and 17. When the deck closes to the public at 2 a.m. April 18, the crew will descend on the display car to reverse the entire process and remove it before visitors return in the morning.
Feast your eyes on the video and photo gallery below to find out what happened in those six weeks of preparation needed to modify a Ford 2015 Mustang Convertible in order to display it atop the Empire State Building.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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