Ford’s brochure for the 1959 Thunderbird boasted about its unibody construction.
But that didn’t dissuade Gibson president Ted McCarty from trying again with another novel shape – one with more-earthbound inspiration. Unlike those craft, none of Gibson’s space-age guitars really made it off the pad. Consciously or not, their modernistic shapes and names reflected the emerging “space race” in ’55, President Dwight Eisenhower announced America’s intent to put a satellite into orbit but the Soviets won the first lap when they launched Sputnik in ’57. Gibson started to push the envelope in 1958 with the Explorer, Flying V, and near-mythical Moderne. And for all the influence some of its unusual creations have had on the instrument’s evolution, they’ve rarely been successful. The Epiphone by Gibson Firebird 500 Gibson will forever be celebrated for its heritage of innovation, including guitars that didn’t look like the common perception of guitars.
