Having made his name and fortune with the Sinclair home computers, Sir Clive Sinclair formed Sinclair Vehicles in March 1983 with £8.6 million from the sale of some of his shares in Sinclair Research. Barrie Wills, formerly of DeLorean, became managing director. An earlier plan for a small electric car, the C1, gave way after a change in the law to the C5, an electrically assisted tricycle with a polypropylene body. Lotus was brought in to finish the design, build prototypes and carry out testing, and Hoover assembled it at its washing-machine factory in Merthyr Tydfil.
The C5 was launched on 10 January 1985 at £399. It was meant to be the first of a series of increasingly ambitious electric vehicles, including a four-seat C15 car, but the press gave it a lukewarm reception, and safety organisations were critical of such a low, open vehicle in traffic. With a top speed of 15 mph, a short range, a battery that ran down quickly and no weather protection, it suited neither car drivers nor cyclists.
Within three months production had been cut by 90%. Hoover stopped production in August 1985 after a financial dispute, by which time 14,000 had been built but only about 5,000 sold, and the company, renamed TPD, went into receivership that October. The C5 later became a cult item: unsold examples changed hands for many times their original price, and enthusiasts have modified them to reach far higher speeds.
