Today in 1965, there was an unusual visitor high atop New York’s famous Empire State Building: a Ford Mustang.
You don’t often see cars dozens of stories above NYC, but then that was kind of the point.
Ford had debuted the Mustang at the 1964 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows.
It was a big hit: the company sold more than 20,000 units on day one, and over 400,000 in the first year.
But, Ford figured, why stop there?
So when the general manager of the Empire State Building reached out to ask if the company would put one of its hot new cars on the tallest building in the world, they decided to go for it.
Of course, going for it took some doing.
You can’t just fly a big heavy car up with a helicopter in the middle of Manhattan and drop it on top of this iconic building.
The Mustang would have to come up from the ground.
But the elevators that run visitors to and from the skyscraper’s observation deck on the 86th floor are built for people, not cars.
Not to mention the doors and hallways.
So Ford first had to send a team to measure all the spaces through which the Mustang would need to travel.
Then they had to figure out how to disassemble a car into pieces that would fit through those openings, and how to reassemble it once it was up high.
The team determined that the Mustang could make it into the elevators if it was split up into four main pieces and a few smaller parts.
They did three dry runs of the disassembly at Ford HQ in Michigan before bringing a white Mustang to New York.
The only real hiccup was when they found the steering column was a quarter inch too tall to fit in the elevator, but they found a workaround and got the pieces to the 86th floor.
They put the Mustang back together on the outdoor deck, took a picture that got sent out worldwide, then took the car apart again so that it could be reassembled indoors.
The Mustang stayed all the way up there until March 1966, but the publicity stunt was so fondly remembered that Ford marked the Mustang’s 50th anniversary with a sequel: they put a 2015 Mustang convertible on top of the Empire State Building.
This time they had to break the car up into six pieces instead of four.
Cars get more complicated over time, after all.
At the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, this is Raisin Monday, and where pranks are around every corner, people are in costume (the more flamboyant the better), and everybody gets together around midday to throw shaving cream at each other.
It’s partly for charity, and since this is university, it’s also a learning experience.
1965 Ford Mustang Empire State Building Stunt (Motor Trend)
No place like foam (University of St. Andrews)
