Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Sinclair C5
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===Launch=== [[File:Alex palace1.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1.3|[[Alexandra Palace]] in London, where the C5's launch was staged on 10 January 1985]] The news of Sinclair's C5 project came as a surprise when it became public and attracted considerable interest, as well as scepticism. ''[[The Economist]]'' reported in June 1983 that carmakers were "startled" but cautious about Sinclair's prospects; as one competitor put it, "If it were anyone but Sinclair, we'd say he was bonkers". ''The Economist'' asked, "Can a man who has made a fortune out of calculators and computers, and could double it on flatscreen televisions, be that crazy?" and wondered whether he was "making a ghastly mistake", a prediction that industry insiders thought was likely.<ref>{{cite news|title=Will Sinclair give or get a shock?|newspaper=The Economist|date=25 June 1983|pages=66β7}}</ref> The C5 was launched on 10 January 1985 at [[Alexandra Palace]] in North London. The event was staged in Sinclair's usual glitzy style, with women handing out press packs<ref name="Dale163" /> and a variety of promotional giveaways: magazines, hats, pullovers, T-shirts, key rings, sun visors, badges, mugs, bags, and even a C5 video game.<ref name="Dale168">Dale, p. 168</ref> The vehicle was given a dramatic unveiling; six C5s driven by women dressed in grey and yellow burst out of six cardboard boxes, drove around the arena, and lined up side by side.<ref name="Dale165">Dale, p. 165</ref> Sinclair announced the launch of a Β£3 million, three-month-long advertising print and television advertising campaign.<ref name="Dale166" /> The C5 would be available initially by mail order at a cost of Β£399 and would subsequently be sold via high-street stores.<ref name="Dale167" /> Sinclair issued a glossy sales brochure characterising the vehicle as a part of an ongoing exercise in "cutting giants down to size, turning impersonal tyrants into personal servants". The brochure highlighted Sinclair's achievements in producing affordable pocket calculators, home computers, and pocket televisions and declared, "with the C5, Sinclair Vehicles puts personal, private transport back where it belongs β in the hands of the individual."<ref name="Brochure" /> The photographs accompanying the text showed housewives and teenagers driving the C5 to shops, railway stations, and sports fields β in the words of technology writers Ian Adamson and Richard Kennedy, "a blue-sky suburbia exclusively populated by electric trikes and their drivers".<ref>Adamson & Kennedy, p. 192</ref> The press was given an opportunity to try out the C5 but this proved to be, as Adamson and Kennedy put it, "an unqualified disaster".<ref name="AK193">Adamson & Kennedy, p. 193</ref> A large number of the demonstration machines did not work, as the assembled journalists soon discovered.<ref name="AK193" /> ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' called the C5 a "Formula One bath-chair"; its reporter "had travelled five yards outdoors when everything went phut and this motorised, plastic, lozenge rolled to a halt with all the stationary decisiveness of a mule".<ref>{{cite news|title=It's not kid's stuff, this Formula One bath-chair|last=Pile|first=Stephen|work=The Sunday Times|date=13 January 1985}}</ref> ''[[The Guardian]]''{{'}}s reporter had a flat battery after only seven minutes,<ref name="Guardian-11-Jan-85">{{cite news|title=Transports of doubtful delight|last1=Harry|first1=Roy|last2=Large|first2=Peter|work=The Guardian|date=11 January 1985|page=13}}</ref> while ''Your Computer'' found that the C5 could not cope with the slopes at Alexandra Palace: "The 250 watt electric motor which drives one of the back wheels proved incapable of powering the C5 up even the gentlest slopes without using pedal power. The tricycle was soon making a plaintive "peep, peep" noise signalling that the engine had overheated."<ref name="YC-Feb-85">{{cite news|title=Knight on a white recharger saves British tricycle industry|url=https://archive.org/stream/your-computer-magazine-1985-02/YourComputer_1985_02#page/n23/mode/2up|work=Your Computer|date=February 1985|page=23}}</ref> Even the former racing driver [[Stirling Moss]] ran into problems when he tried out the C5 on the roads around Alexandra Palace. The Canadian newspaper ''[[The Globe and Mail]]'' reported that while he had started out well, "a jaunty smile on [his] face as he braved some of the worst exhaust fumes in the world spluttering almost directly into his face from trucks he could almost drive underneath", he ran into problems when he reached a hill: "It was at this point that he realised the battery had gone dead. On a cold and foggy London day, the great man was visibly sweating."<ref name="GM-11-Jan-1985" /> The timing and location of the launch event β in the middle of winter, on the top of a snow- and ice-covered hill β later prompted criticism even from Sinclair executives, who admitted off the record that spring conditions might have been better for a vehicle with so little protection from the British climate.<ref name="FT=23-Apr-1985" /> The ''[[Financial Times]]'' called it "the worst possible timing to launch what was proclaimed to be a serious, road-going vehicle".<ref name="FT-15-Oct-1985">{{cite news|title=C5's Road to the Receiver|last=Griffiths|first=John|work=The Financial Times|date=15 October 1985|page=10}}</ref> Sinclair's biographer Rodney Dale describes it as "a calculated (or miscalculated) risk", observing that production was already underway, details were beginning to leak out to the press and "the launch could hardly have been held up until the possibility of a bright spring day". He justified the choice of January as being necessitated by a need to release the C5 "as soon as possible lest the erroneous speculation should have done more harm than good".<ref name="Dale168" /> Rob Gray offers an alternative explanation, that the launch date had been brought forward because Sinclair's development funds were running low.<ref name="Gray92">Gray, p. 92</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)