Fifty years ago this week, Ford made history by staging the greatest car launch in history — building up the drama around its new Mustang with stunts like papering over dealership windows and landing on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazine. To celebrate its anniversary, Ford re-created a stunt it last pulled off in 1965 — landing a new Mustang on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.

Since there's no cranes that can reach those heights, and delivery by helicopter would pose too many safety risks, the only way to get a Mustang up the Empire State is to cut it in pieces, then reassemble it up top.In 1965, that involved cutting the Mustang into three pieces and taking a few trips in the freight elevator. The 2015 Mustang convertible weighs at least 500 pounds more than the '65 edition, and is far longer, wider and taller, requiring a more complex effort to get it topside.

Using some of the same workers at a Michigan company that pulled off the first Mustang visit, Ford engineers spent weeks planning, disassembling and cutting a new 2015 Mustang into the right sizes for both freight and passenger elevators at the Empire State. Since the deck stays open to the public well into the night, the crew only had six hours starting at 2 a.m. today to haul the pieces up and re-assemble the car — a trick they'll have to reverse on Friday morning. The Mustang is the only car to ever take in the view from the Empire State, and given how much work it takes, it will likely be another 50 years before Ford tries again.







