The Gibson Guitar Corporation released several new types of guitars during the 1950s to combat Fender's successful and modern guitars, such as the Stratocaster and theTelecaster. Fender's range of colours, shapes and multiple pickups were endorsed by many notable guitarists of the 1960s.  Gibson had success with the Les Paul in the 1950s, but their other releases, the Flying V and the Explorer, were failures. The president of Gibson at the time, Ted McCarthy, hired car designer Ray Deitrich to design a guitar to combat Fender.   The Firebird line of guitars had four guitar models and one bass model, the latter known as the Thunderbird.  The Firebird's design was unable to effectively compete with Fender's Jaguar and Jazzmaster models that were released at about the same time. In addition, the guitar's design (which Fender complained was copied from their Jazzmaster instruments) was expensive to manufacture. Consequently, the entire line was revamped, and the guitar was given a less angular, flipped body style known as the "non-reverse" template. After a few years of disappointing sales, the line was dropped and was not reissued until the late 1970s.