Mustang: An American Icon

At dandelion + burdock, we thrive on turning ambitious visions into reality. Our recent collaboration on the touring event Mustang: An American Icon is a strong example of how we solve complex creative challenges through immersive storytelling.

Mustang: An American Icon invited audiences to journey through the legacy of the Ford Mustang via a series of themed immersive rooms. We were tasked with creating two distinct, fully immersive narrative experiences, each featuring 360-degree projection mapping across all walls and the floor, with a physical Mustang car at the heart of each space.

In the first room, visitors stepped back in time to explore the Mustang’s origins and its cultural impact across the decades. The experience began with a motion graphics reveal, before transporting the audience to 1960s Detroit and a lively car factory environment. We recreated the atmosphere of the World’s Fair where the Mustang debuted, then guided visitors through Santa Monica Beach and along Venice Beach across the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

The journey culminated in a Hollywood Boulevard scene at sunset, where iconic film moments featuring the Mustang appeared on billboards lining the street. This room blended history with popular culture, using Houdini and Redshift to create a richly detailed environment populated by hundreds of AI-generated characters that brought each era to life.

The second room shifted tone to deliver a high-octane thrill ride. A modern Mustang sat on a rotating turntable, while content created using Houdini and Unreal Engine spun the audience through iconic American landscapes. Scenes moved from the Pacific Coast Highway to a desert storm and into a fast-paced LA street race, all synchronised with the motion of the car.

The experience concluded in an underground tuner garage beneath the city, where fan-submitted Mustang imagery was projected throughout the space. This final moment celebrated the Mustang community and the personal stories connected to the car.

Across both rooms, the core challenge was environmental storytelling at scale. The goal was to use richly detailed, high-resolution visuals to transport audiences through time and place while maintaining clarity and immersion. We integrated historical artefacts, period-accurate music and AI-generated characters to add authenticity and depth. In the second room, precise synchronisation between the rotating turntable and the surrounding content was critical, while the fan-submitted gallery provided a personal and emotional conclusion to the experience.

In the end, the project became a celebration of both the Mustang’s heritage and its cinematic legacy, and a testament to our team’s ability to translate bold ideas into fully realised immersive environments.