Editing Sinclair C5 (section)

===Demise of Sinclair Vehicles===
[[File:Abandoned Sinclair C5.jpg|right|thumb|An abandoned Sinclair C5 in [[Fife]], Scotland]]
Production did not recommence and the Hoover production line remained closed permanently. On 19 September 1985, Sinclair Vehicles changed its name to TPD Limited, with a direct subsidiary named Sinclair Vehicles Sales Limited continuing to sell C5s. TPD only lasted until 15 October, when it was placed into receivership. The receivers announced that 4,500 C5s had been sold by Sinclair Vehicles, with another 4,500 remaining in the company's hands. £7.75 million was reportedly owed to creditors, of which £7 million was owed to Sir Clive Sinclair himself in reflection of his personal investment in the project. Hoover was not among the creditors, as Sinclair had managed to settle the dispute on terms that neither company would reveal.<ref>{{cite news|title=Receivers Put Debts of Sinclair's C5 Concern at £7.75m|last=Griffiths|first=John|work=The Financial Times|date=15 October 1985|page=1}}</ref>

On 5 November, TPD was formally liquidated at a creditors' meeting. It was revealed, to the anger of the creditors, that Sinclair had taken out a £5 million [[debenture]] to cover the money that he had put into the company. Ordinary creditors faced little prospect of recovering the £1 million left outstanding.<ref name="Guardian-6-Nov-1985">{{cite news|title=Little hope for Sinclair creditors|last=Wheatcroft|first=Patience|work=The Guardian|date=6 November 1985|page=17}}</ref> Primary Contact, the marketing agency used by Sinclair to promote the C5, was left with the biggest unpaid bill, of nearly £500,000.<ref name="Guardian-6-Nov-1985" /> The last of the unsold C5s were bought for £75 each by Ellar (Surplus Goods) Ltd of Liverpool, which planned to sell 1,000 of them to an Egyptian businessman for use on a university campus while another 1,500 were intended to be sold in the UK.<ref name="SundayTimes-15-Dec-1985" />

Many reasons have been suggested for the failure of Sinclair Vehicles and what Dale calls "the jigsaw of the C5's disappointment".<ref name="Dale160" /> One of the receivers of Sinclair Vehicles, John Sapte, suggested that Sinclair had taken the wrong tack with its marketing of the C5: "It was presented as a serious transport, when perhaps it should have been presented as a luxury product, an up-market plaything."<ref name="FT-15-Oct-1985" /> Ellar's director Maurice Levensohn took exactly this tack when he purchased Sinclair Vehicles' remaining stock, saying that his company would market them as "a sophisticated toy": "If you were a little boy, wouldn't you want your parents to get you one this Christmas?"<ref name="SundayTimes-15-Dec-1985" /> His strategy was successful; Ellar sold nearly 7,000 C5s at up to £700 each, far more (and at a higher price) than Sinclair had ever managed.<ref>{{cite news|title=Whatever happened to the C5?|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/whatever-happened-to-the-sinclair-c5-1350234.html|newspaper=The Independent|first=Sam|last=Coates|date=2 November 1996|access-date=27 September 2014}}</ref>

Some commentators attributed the C5's failure to problems with Sinclair's marketing strategy; only a year after the demise of Sinclair Vehicles, the ''Globe and Mail'' newspaper called it "one of the great marketing bombs of postwar British industry".<ref name="GandM" /> Andrew P. Marks of [[Paisley College of Technology]] criticised Sinclair's marketing strategy as confused; the C5 promotional brochure depicts it as a leisure vehicle, showing boys in C5s at a football pitch, women in C5s on a suburban road, and so on, while the text suggests that the C5 is a serious substitute for a car. He concludes that the C5 was poorly defined, appearing to be "trying to grasp at two different markets" but was unable to appeal to either, and so failed to take off. The fact that it was initially only available via mail order was also a mistake, in Marks' view, as it meant that no physical inspection of the product could be made before purchasing it. This was a serious deterrent to consumers as it made the C5 a much more risky purchase.<ref name="Marks1989" />

The design researcher and academic [[Nigel Cross]] calls the C5 a "notorious&nbsp;... example of failure" and describes its basic concept as "wrong". He said the marketing research for the C5 was carried out ''after'' the vehicle's concept had already been decided, observing that it appears to have been intended "mainly to aid promotion" rather than to guide development.<ref name="Cross" /> Gus Desbarats, the C5's industrial designer, attributes the vehicle's flawed concept to Sinclair operating in a "bubble"<ref name="Gray93" /> and believes that Sinclair "failed to understand the difference between a new market, computing, and a mature one, transport, where there were more benchmarks to compare against".<ref name="Gray91">Gray, p. 91</ref> He comments that the experience of working on the C5 convinced him of the need for industrial designers such as himself to get "involved early in the innovation process, shaping basic configurations, never again [being] satisfied to simply decorate a fundamentally bad idea".<ref name="Gray93" />

Sinclair himself said in 2005 that the C5 "was early for what it was. People reacted negatively and the press didn't help. It was too low down and people felt insecure, hence it got bad press."<ref name="Scotsman-10-Jan-2005" /> Sam Dawson of ''Classic and Sport Car Magazine'' described the C5 as "incredibly fun to drive", suggesting that the safety concerns "could have been addressed if it wasn't for the fact that it was already doomed as a national joke." He noted the disconnect between the media's expectations of a serious electric car and the reality of the C5, which he called "just a fun way of getting around".<ref name="BBC-13-Jul-2014" /> Professor Stuart Cole of the [[University of South Wales]] comments that the C5 suffered from the design of the roads and the attitudes of the time, which were not geared towards pedal or electric vehicles: "In the days before unleaded petrol, your face would have been at the height of every exhaust pipe, and drivers weren't used to having to consider slower-moving cyclists. But with more cycle lanes, better education, and workplaces providing showers, etc., the world now is much more geared up for people looking for alternatives to the car, and hopefully will become even more so in the future."<ref name="BBC-13-Jul-2014">{{cite news|title=Sinclair C5 built in Merthyr in 1984 'was ahead of its time'|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-28219291|last=Prior|first=Neil|work=BBC News|date=13 July 2014|access-date=13 September 2014}}</ref>