In 1965, when the Ford Mustang was brand new, it was a huge hit. In the first full year of sales Ford managed to sell 400,000 of them, setting an all time record for new car sales. Generating buzz like this was very different in those pre-digital revolution days, but one thing remained the same: if you pull off a bad-ass stunt with a cool product, people will take note.
What Ford did was put a '66 Mustang Convertible on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Hell, this kind of stunt still works. Of course, it was a little trickier for Ford in '65 than it was for Aston in 2012.
In order to get the Mustang up there, Ford cut it into pieces so that the 15 foot long car could be crammed into the seven foot tall elevators. The team rehearsed with similar elevators at the automaker's HQ in Dearborn before taking the car to New York. When they arrived in New York, they found that the car chunks were a quarter of an inch too tall to fit, but they could angle the very heavy pieces slightly to get them into the elevator; disaster averted.
That year, Ford sold 607,568 Mustangs.
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[via Ford]
