Two modern American icons will come together when the latest generation of the Mustang convertible appears on the top of the Empire State Building in April to celebrate 50 continuous years of production of the Pony car by Ford.

The new, 2015 Ford Mustang convertible will be on display on the 86th floor observatory in the Empire State Building.

The publicity stunt requires that the car be cut into multiple sections, transported up the elevator on wheeled carts, and reassembled by a technical team in the display area. Because of the building’s stunning height at 1,454 feet, there is no portable crane to make the delivery easier. The spire at the top of the building makes a helicopter delivery equally impossible.

Ford managed the stunt once before in 1965 using a similar process, but the prototype Mustang displayed then was seven inches shorter and four inches narrower than the new model.

Working from computer engineering data, team members preparing the display car have found places to make the cuts in the car so everything can be loaded onto custom-made racks that can be rolled into the elevators.

Once everything is on the 86th floor and uncrated, the technicians will have less than six hours to reassemble the sections.

“Like all good craftsmen, our team is measuring twice and cutting once to make sure we can get this Mustang up in the elevators,” said Dave Pericak, Mustang chief engineer.

“Like the team that did this in 1965, the current crew visited the Empire State Building before starting and took careful measurements of its new elevators and doors before cutting up the car,” Pericak said.

The original Mustang was revealed for the first time in a television ad campaign on April 16, 1964, and then first shown to the public at the World’s Fair in New York on April 17, 1964. The car officially went on sale that day with a record 22,000 orders in sales that first day. More than nine million Mustangs have been sold in the past fifty years.

Visitors can join the celebration and view the 2015 Ford Mustang on display at the Empire State Building’s 86th floor observatory from from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. on April 16 and 17.

Image via Wikimedia Commons