It's a tradition at Ford. Months before it goes on sale, the 2015 Mustang will make its cinematic debut during a brief appearance in Need For Speed, which opens this Friday at every movie theater on earth. It's a brief cameo appearance that recalls the original Mustang's own early movie moment 50 years ago.
Back in 1964—in a scene shot along Switzerland's Furka Pass before the original pony car was unveiled—comely Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet) taunted and teased Sean Connery as James Bond from the driver's seat of a white Mustang convertible in Goldfinger. "It was a huge coup for Ford," recalled Tania Mallet to Britain's Octane magazine in 2009. "The car was sent from America, and when it arrived on the set it was still wrapped up so that no one could see what it looked like." Connery was driving some obscure English sports car.
The chances of Need For Speed becoming a classic on par with Goldfinger are slight to say the least. But Ford wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to whet the world's appetite for the latest version of its pony. "Being in these movies is core to what this car is," says Mustang chief engineer Dave Pericak. "It continues this legacy of the emotion people have with the Mustang." So Ford made a high-security effort to get the 2015 Mustang GT to the Need For Speed set in Nevada last June, a full six months before the car's official debut.
"We stole it from the calibration team," explains Pericak of the particular car that would become a sort-of star. "They were using it for testing. It was a prototype without the right graining on many of the parts and a hodge-podge of stuff. We turned it into the car we wanted it to be, and that was a significant amount of work." It's not easy building a car that looks like a "job one" production car when virtually all of its parts are still being developed.
Plans began in February 2013 with securing a prototype equipped with an EcoBoost V-6—and then swapping that for a GT prototype with the 5.0-liter Coyote V-8—while Pericak's team began assessing what else was needed. "At that point we had not fully dressed out a car," he says. "The only time we had done that was on the styling model in the studio and that car had never, ever seen the sun."
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Calling in favors, cajoling reluctant suppliers, and building some pieces with their own hands, the finished Need For Speed car was coming together. "We had to get parts that were worthy of being on the big screen," says Pericak. "That was a big task. We had four or five people dedicated to scrounging and getting parts. We had to sit with the PR team and convince them this was a good idea. That we had a way to secure the vehicle and that this wouldn't get out into the media and the real world. I had to promise that I would personally manage this and that nothing would get out."
To get the Mustang painted and onto the set, Pericak contracted with DST Industries. The car would move directly from Michigan to Nevada in one of DST's secure covered vans. The only stops would be for fuel. Law-enforcement agencies along the route were informed beforehand that the truck was coming through carrying a Ford prototype and that, if the truck were stopped, to not open it and reveal the secret inside. "We didn't tell them it was a Mustang," admits Pericak, "only that it was a prototype."
"We literally shipped the car out the night before," Pericak sighs. "We were there when it arrived on the set and made sure we full control of the car. I personally drove around for several hours looking for vantage points from where people might get a shot of the Mustang. We had the local police close the site for five miles around. And once we had the road shut down, I went looking for anything suspicious. When the car wasn't on camera, it was under a cover.
Still, the on-set security proved to be less than airtight. "A guy came through on a four-wheeler," says Pericak incredulously. "So I jumped into a (Ford) Edge and hightailed where he had headed. I spotted a four-wheeler and there he was, sitting on a rock." When the four-wheeler owner admitted he had a cell phone with him, Pericak went Dragnet on him. "I said, 'I'll need to see it.' And I was looking at photos of his kids and family and stuff. But I didn't find any photos from the current day." Pericak also asked to see in the rider's backpack—which contained a gun. "He said he was shooting rattlesnakes up in the mountains. At that point, I didn't really care."
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The shoot itself was uneventful and quick. And once the car had done its movie duty—which included having actor Aaron Paul behind the wheel—it was put back in its trailer and shipped back across the country.
How much did all this cost? Pericak says he's never added it all up but admitted that it was a "not insignificant amount of money." Currently, Pericak is spending much of his time at the Mustang assembly plant in Flint Rock, Michigan, overseeing the production of a few 2015 Mustangs on the same line that's still turning out the current 2014 model.
The 2015 Mustang's appearance in Need For Speed is quick and at the end. Most of the Mustang-heavy action in the film was performed by 2014-model Mustang GTs (including six donated to the production by Ford), plus a true Shelby GT500 "hero car" that was used for close-ups. It's probably no surprise that most of those were destroyed over the course of production.
After its return to Michigan, the 2015 Mustang seen in the movie was returned to the test fleet and resumed the harsh life of a prototype. It will not wind up in a museum, explains Pericak. "I believe that car has already been crash-tested."
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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