The Ford Mustang’s 50th anniversary celebrations, which will include events in both Las Vegas, NV and* Charlotte, NC, are now less than 300 days away (295 to be exact), and planning for both seems to be coming along quite well thanks to the Mustang Club of America who are currently working diligently to organize the festivities. How do we know? This past weekend the club’s executive director, Ron Bramlett, has released a letter detailing many of the updates that have happened since the celebrations were first announced back in April. Those interested in attending can now register for the events in either location, learn how to participate in the Mustang 50th Half Marathon & 5K or find a hotel for the event.
You can read the full letter below, or head over to the MCA’s web site for more information.
Fellow Mustang Club of America National Board of Directors and Regional Directors,
Again, although I’ve been allowed a few minutes to speak about the 50th at the MCA National Board of Directors meeting in Dallas on July 20th, 2013, I thought it would be better to put this Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration up-date on paper so it could be shared with all of you and the ¬members of your MCA Regional Clubs. First of all, I want to say “Thank You” to all who are involved in helping to make the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration the greatest Mustang celebration the hobby has ever seen!
At the last Mustang Board of Directors Meeting in Dallas, I again outlined all of the hard work that had been done to that point by all of the members of the 50th team who are dedicating their time and effort to the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration. This update will be about what has taken place since.
The enthusiasm for the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration continues to grow. In May, we launched the event website at www.mustang50thbirthdaycelebration.com and are working to fill it with information. The Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration has a very simple home page that gets you to the information that you’re looking for quickly and easily. When you go to it, there is a tool bar at the top and 3 Gold Mustangs below to click on. Be sure to read the tool bar as this is where you’ll find general information about the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration. If you are looking for information pertaining to the different locations, then that’s when you click on the Gold Mustangs. Once there, you will have specific information about that location.
The Gold Mustangs are for the Pony Drives and Kick Off Party in Norman, Oklahoma, the Charlotte Celebration and the Las Vegas Celebration. If you want to register for the Charlotte Celebration, you click on the Charlotte Gold Mustang. It will bring a picture of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and a tool bar on the top of the picture. You can then pick Hotel, Registration, Schedule or whatever information you’re looking for or need. It’s very easy to move around on as the “back arrow” in the upper left hand corner takes you back to the previous page. There are still a lot of things to fill in, as a lot of the information simply isn’t available at this time. We suggest that you come back every few days and check on what’s been added.
On May 7th, we opened the hotels up for the Charlotte Celebration. The Las Vegas Hotels were opened up a few days later. As I write this, we are planning to open the Pony Drive Hotels up for registration in just a few days. So, as you read this, they should be open. These took a little longer to get the contract completed as the tornados in the area made us look at, and slightly change, the contracts. I’m happy to say that we’re back on track and have everything taken care of.
The nine routes for the Pony Drives, and most of the other information concerning them, is almost ready to be posted on the website. Hopefully by the time you read this, it will be posted. The Pony Drives have been an enormous undertaking. As anyone who has done one will tell you, it’s very hard to organize one Pony Drive across our great nation. But we’re talking about nine Pony Drives, here. For each Pony Drive, you have to organize the starting point, lunch stops, over night hotel stops and many activities along the way for everyone to enjoy. With the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration Pony drives, you have to multiply all that by nine! However, it’s just about completed. In a recent teleconference with David Turnball, the founder of The Great American Pony Drive and our head Trail Boss, he told us that he is still working to get an agreement with a couple of the hotels along the way. He and Asheville’s Joe Grace have been working hard to get everything put together so we can have the greatest Mustang Pony Drive the world has ever seen!
As for the Kick-Off Party in Norman, Sandy Boleware, Bill Bradford and the Oklahoma Mustang Club have everything planned and ready to go. I’m sure that we will have a few surprises and additions to the events they already have planned, but for the most part, as soon as we get the Pony Drives up on the website, the Kick-Off Party in Norman will follow.
On Thursday, June 6th, we opened up registration for the Charlotte and Las Vegas Celebrations. We had hoped to be able to open these registrations up the month before in May, but testing of the registration process took longer then we anticipated. After many of us tested the system, both by ourselves and in many conference calls with Wayne and Michael at MotoSho who are developing the system for the MCA, two MCA Regional Clubs were asked to use the MotoSho system and report any problems. This helped us identify several small problems before registration was to be opened on a larger scale. Today we’re running smoothly but we know there are still going to be some refinements needed. To date, over 600 entries have been processed with only a handful of changes needed or problems to solve. One of these changes was to add “Hatchback” to the drop down list of models and the addition of a couple of colors to the drop down list of colors. While these are improvements, they are not something that will stop people from being able to register their Mustangs.
On Friday, May 31st, we opened the registration for the Mustang 50th Half Marathon & 5K Presented By Shelby American. This is a one time only marathon event that will be held on the morning of Saturday, April 19th at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Vision Event Management (VEM) has been retained to run the actual event. VEM does several marathons each year for clients such as us. The Half Marathon and 5K will start at the LVMS start\finish line on the oval. The course winds around the speedway, up and down the dragstrip, around the 3-mile outside road course and ends at Shelby American Headquarters where the finish line will be. As the Half Marathon and 5K finishes up, there will be a party at Shelby American. Later, the drawing will take place for a one-off Shelby GTS Convertible that will be won by someone who has registered for the marathon. The exact time has not been set as of this writing. By the way, you need not be present or have actually run in the marathon to win the one-off Shelby. You simply have to register for the Half Marathon &5K and pay the entry fees to be eligible to win. This is in accordance with the Nevada State Gaming Commission’s rules that will pertain to the automobile giveaway. For all the information, go to www.mustang50thhalfmaration.com . You can sign up today to run in the marathon, to win the one-off Shelby GTS Convertible, or both! Spread the word! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a very special Shelby Mustang 50th Marathon GTS Convertible!
We have also laid out the available space for sponsors and vendors at each location and are starting to bring sponsors and vendors onboard. If any of you have a possible sponsor or vendor that would like that information, please refer them to the event website where they can find the information they are looking for or the contact information for the person who can help them.
The Carolina Regional Mustang Club has been working hard on all aspects of the Charlotte Celebration, planning everything from the Open Track to hospitality so that the attendees will have a great time. In Las Vegas, we’re working with an event planning organization that has the ear of everyone in Las Vegas and is helping us plan a great Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration in their city, Vegas style! If you want to know exactly what that means, you’ll just have to come to Vegas and see! More as we roll along and are able to put definite plans in place.
As you all know, Scott Drake is sponsoring the building of a 1964 1\2 Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration Convertible to promote the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration and raise awareness for the National Down Syndrome Association. Scott has been “Hands On”, visiting the Mustangs of East Texas at their shop where this special Mustang is being built. Work is well underway and maybe Craig will be able elaborate on the progress. We will have details and pictures of the build on the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration website in just a few days.
There have been a few questions and concerns but far less than I expected. And all of them have been very easy to answer and/or correct, when correction was necessary. Mostly it’s just been people wanting to understand exactly what’s happening and what’s going to happen. Unfortunately, we can’t always tell them exactly what’s happening, as there are contracts to sign, plans to agree upon and events to organize. As an example, we are planning a couple of concerts. But, we don’t have the contracts signed with the venues or the artist. It would be foolish to promote these events, even just a little, and then have them fall through. And believe me, there are several of these types of situations pending! So, I have to ask everyone to just be patient. The next couple of months will be very busy and we’ll get the information out as quickly as possible!
The one thing I will ask is that everyone encourages your friends, family and club members to become engaged and plan to come and enjoy the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration! Keep coming back to the website at www.mustang50thbirthdaycelebration.com as more and more information will become available as time goes on. Remember, all of us who are working on the Mustang 50th are volunteers and we all have other jobs, families and responsibilities that we have to look after, too. Please consider that when it seems that things are happening too slowly.
As always, I’m ready to answer all of your questions the best I can. Please feel free to contact me anytime. We will keep you posted. I will give a report on how many registrations we have and the money we’ve taken in at the July MCA National Directors meeting.
Respectfully,
Ron Bramlett
Executive Director
Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration
(209) 471-2383 cell
ron@mustangsplus.com
Click here to download the Mustang 50th Anniversary Celebration UpdateAgain, although I’ve been allowed a few minutes to speak about the 50th at the MCA National Board of Directors meeting in Dallas on July 20th, 2013, I thought it would be better to put this Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration up-date on paper so it could be shared with all of you and the ¬members of your MCA Regional Clubs. First of all, I want to say “Thank You” to all who are involved in helping to make the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration the greatest Mustang celebration the hobby has ever seen!
At the last Mustang Board of Directors Meeting in Dallas, I again outlined all of the hard work that had been done to that point by all of the members of the 50th team who are dedicating their time and effort to the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration. This update will be about what has taken place since.
The enthusiasm for the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration continues to grow. In May, we launched the event website at www.mustang50thbirthdaycelebration.com and are working to fill it with information. The Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration has a very simple home page that gets you to the information that you’re looking for quickly and easily. When you go to it, there is a tool bar at the top and 3 Gold Mustangs below to click on. Be sure to read the tool bar as this is where you’ll find general information about the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration. If you are looking for information pertaining to the different locations, then that’s when you click on the Gold Mustangs. Once there, you will have specific information about that location.
The Gold Mustangs are for the Pony Drives and Kick Off Party in Norman, Oklahoma, the Charlotte Celebration and the Las Vegas Celebration. If you want to register for the Charlotte Celebration, you click on the Charlotte Gold Mustang. It will bring a picture of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and a tool bar on the top of the picture. You can then pick Hotel, Registration, Schedule or whatever information you’re looking for or need. It’s very easy to move around on as the “back arrow” in the upper left hand corner takes you back to the previous page. There are still a lot of things to fill in, as a lot of the information simply isn’t available at this time. We suggest that you come back every few days and check on what’s been added.
On May 7th, we opened the hotels up for the Charlotte Celebration. The Las Vegas Hotels were opened up a few days later. As I write this, we are planning to open the Pony Drive Hotels up for registration in just a few days. So, as you read this, they should be open. These took a little longer to get the contract completed as the tornados in the area made us look at, and slightly change, the contracts. I’m happy to say that we’re back on track and have everything taken care of.
The nine routes for the Pony Drives, and most of the other information concerning them, is almost ready to be posted on the website. Hopefully by the time you read this, it will be posted. The Pony Drives have been an enormous undertaking. As anyone who has done one will tell you, it’s very hard to organize one Pony Drive across our great nation. But we’re talking about nine Pony Drives, here. For each Pony Drive, you have to organize the starting point, lunch stops, over night hotel stops and many activities along the way for everyone to enjoy. With the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration Pony drives, you have to multiply all that by nine! However, it’s just about completed. In a recent teleconference with David Turnball, the founder of The Great American Pony Drive and our head Trail Boss, he told us that he is still working to get an agreement with a couple of the hotels along the way. He and Asheville’s Joe Grace have been working hard to get everything put together so we can have the greatest Mustang Pony Drive the world has ever seen!
As for the Kick-Off Party in Norman, Sandy Boleware, Bill Bradford and the Oklahoma Mustang Club have everything planned and ready to go. I’m sure that we will have a few surprises and additions to the events they already have planned, but for the most part, as soon as we get the Pony Drives up on the website, the Kick-Off Party in Norman will follow.
On Thursday, June 6th, we opened up registration for the Charlotte and Las Vegas Celebrations. We had hoped to be able to open these registrations up the month before in May, but testing of the registration process took longer then we anticipated. After many of us tested the system, both by ourselves and in many conference calls with Wayne and Michael at MotoSho who are developing the system for the MCA, two MCA Regional Clubs were asked to use the MotoSho system and report any problems. This helped us identify several small problems before registration was to be opened on a larger scale. Today we’re running smoothly but we know there are still going to be some refinements needed. To date, over 600 entries have been processed with only a handful of changes needed or problems to solve. One of these changes was to add “Hatchback” to the drop down list of models and the addition of a couple of colors to the drop down list of colors. While these are improvements, they are not something that will stop people from being able to register their Mustangs.
On Friday, May 31st, we opened the registration for the Mustang 50th Half Marathon & 5K Presented By Shelby American. This is a one time only marathon event that will be held on the morning of Saturday, April 19th at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Vision Event Management (VEM) has been retained to run the actual event. VEM does several marathons each year for clients such as us. The Half Marathon and 5K will start at the LVMS start\finish line on the oval. The course winds around the speedway, up and down the dragstrip, around the 3-mile outside road course and ends at Shelby American Headquarters where the finish line will be. As the Half Marathon and 5K finishes up, there will be a party at Shelby American. Later, the drawing will take place for a one-off Shelby GTS Convertible that will be won by someone who has registered for the marathon. The exact time has not been set as of this writing. By the way, you need not be present or have actually run in the marathon to win the one-off Shelby. You simply have to register for the Half Marathon &5K and pay the entry fees to be eligible to win. This is in accordance with the Nevada State Gaming Commission’s rules that will pertain to the automobile giveaway. For all the information, go to www.mustang50thhalfmaration.com . You can sign up today to run in the marathon, to win the one-off Shelby GTS Convertible, or both! Spread the word! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a very special Shelby Mustang 50th Marathon GTS Convertible!
We have also laid out the available space for sponsors and vendors at each location and are starting to bring sponsors and vendors onboard. If any of you have a possible sponsor or vendor that would like that information, please refer them to the event website where they can find the information they are looking for or the contact information for the person who can help them.
The Carolina Regional Mustang Club has been working hard on all aspects of the Charlotte Celebration, planning everything from the Open Track to hospitality so that the attendees will have a great time. In Las Vegas, we’re working with an event planning organization that has the ear of everyone in Las Vegas and is helping us plan a great Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration in their city, Vegas style! If you want to know exactly what that means, you’ll just have to come to Vegas and see! More as we roll along and are able to put definite plans in place.
As you all know, Scott Drake is sponsoring the building of a 1964 1\2 Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration Convertible to promote the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration and raise awareness for the National Down Syndrome Association. Scott has been “Hands On”, visiting the Mustangs of East Texas at their shop where this special Mustang is being built. Work is well underway and maybe Craig will be able elaborate on the progress. We will have details and pictures of the build on the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration website in just a few days.
There have been a few questions and concerns but far less than I expected. And all of them have been very easy to answer and/or correct, when correction was necessary. Mostly it’s just been people wanting to understand exactly what’s happening and what’s going to happen. Unfortunately, we can’t always tell them exactly what’s happening, as there are contracts to sign, plans to agree upon and events to organize. As an example, we are planning a couple of concerts. But, we don’t have the contracts signed with the venues or the artist. It would be foolish to promote these events, even just a little, and then have them fall through. And believe me, there are several of these types of situations pending! So, I have to ask everyone to just be patient. The next couple of months will be very busy and we’ll get the information out as quickly as possible!
The one thing I will ask is that everyone encourages your friends, family and club members to become engaged and plan to come and enjoy the Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration! Keep coming back to the website at www.mustang50thbirthdaycelebration.com as more and more information will become available as time goes on. Remember, all of us who are working on the Mustang 50th are volunteers and we all have other jobs, families and responsibilities that we have to look after, too. Please consider that when it seems that things are happening too slowly.
As always, I’m ready to answer all of your questions the best I can. Please feel free to contact me anytime. We will keep you posted. I will give a report on how many registrations we have and the money we’ve taken in at the July MCA National Directors meeting.
Respectfully,
Ron Bramlett
Executive Director
Mustang 50th Birthday Celebration
(209) 471-2383 cell
ron@mustangsplus.com
