Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Company stands with the completed 2015 Mustang convertible on the Empire State Building’s 86th floor observation deck. Images: Ford

Ford and their supporters have gone above and beyond this week to celebrate the iconic Mustang’s 50th birthday. We’ve seen commemorative racing liveries, special pop culture quizzes and even the introduction of a special-edition 50th Anniversary Mustang. But nothing can really top the feat of transporting a full-size Mustang up to the top of the Empire State Building’s observation deck to recreate the 1965 Mustang’s debut on top of the New York skyline.

Earlier this week, we brought you the official video of the Ford engineers’ road to the top of the building, showcasing some of the work that had to go into prepping the new Mustang to be taken up to the 86th floor. Well, now that the Mustang’s 50th birthday is officially here, the 2015 Mustang is fully intact on the observation deck ready for enthusiasts and tourists alike to visit the Stang in its high-up location.

According to Ford’s Media site, the feat of recreating the Mustang’s initial debut at the top of one of New York’s most well-known buildings took six weeks of extensive work. After all, the 2015 Mustang now sitting on the observation deck had to be fully dismantled, shipped up over 1,000 feet and then reassembled. To pull this off, Ford turned to long-time partner in this sort of stunt, Michigan-based DST Industries.

DST was on hand the only other time a car was displayed on the Empire State Building – the 1965 Mustang back at the start of the muscle car era.

“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,” Dave Pericak, Mustang chief engineer, stated in Ford’s news release about the event. “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.”

It’s a good thing that DST was on hand, as the Mustang’s recent trek to the top of the Empire State Building may not have been possible.

“When our engineers sat down with the DST team to start plotting this out in mid-February, everyone quickly realized that some old-school craftsmanship would be needed to successfully place this car more than 1,000 feet above the crowded streets of Manhattan,” George Samulski, manager, Ford North America design fabrication stated in the news release. “The deck is too high to reach with a portable crane from the street, and the spire that towers more than 400 feet above that narrow deck makes helicopter delivery impossible.”

Getting the Mustang up to the 86th floor required several cuts to be made in the convertible’s body, which was reassembled using a special custom-built steel subframe once on the observation deck.

With a freight elevator and two passenger elevators being the only viable means of transporting the Mustang’s many sections, DST even created a mock-up of the smallest elevator to be used to make sure all the parts and custom-built carts made to transport everything would fit properly and not exceed the elevators’ weight limits.

The observation deck on the Empire State Building is closed to the public for just six hours a day, so crews really had to put the work in early Wednesday morning to get everything shipped to the 86th floor and assembled before the deck reopened at 8a.m. In the days prior, crews practiced for the feat to make sure everything was concise down to the minute to get the task done.

Now sitting 86 floors up, the 2015 Triple Yellow Mustang convertible is an ode to the past, as well as a reminder to visitors and enthusiasts alike why the Mustang still remains among the top muscle cars in the industry.

You can see the car on display on the observation deck at the Empire State Building through 2a.m. tomorrow morning, at which time Ford and DST crew members will reverse their stunning feat and have the Mustang out of the building by the time the deck reopens at 8a.m. Friday morning.