Sinclair and the 'Sunrise' Technology: The Deconstruction of a Myth (27 page)

It seems fair to assume that at the time Tony Rogers was churning out early prototypes of the vehicle, Sinclair was perfectly sincere in his desire to create a revolutionary form of personal transport. As a man for whom public acclaim invariably takes precedence over monetary gain, he would have relished the prospect of going down in history as the inventor who took carbon-dioxide pollution out of the twentieth century. An authentic realization of Sinclair’s transportation revolution would have offered social salvation and commercial success. Furthermore, his stubborn dedication to the television project demonstrates that neither time nor escalating research costs would be regarded as significant obstacles to product realization. In the event, the stolid but relentless progress of Clive the visionary was distracted by legislative developments that awakened the reflex opportunism of Clive the entrepreneur.

The motivation for accelerating the vehicle development programme came in March 1980, when the government abolished motor tax for all types of electric transport. Overnight, Sinclair’s vision started to look like a viable marketing proposition. Over the next eighteen months, Rogers pushed ahead with the development of the body design and motor, but according to his biographer Sinclair took the decision to make do with existing battery technology:

Part of the ground-up approach was not to spend... enormous amounts trying to develop a more efficient battery, but to make use of the models already available. Sinclair’s very sound reasoning was that a successful electric vehicle would provide the necessary push to battery manufacturers to pursue their own developments in the fullness of time: for him to sponsor this work would be a misplacement of funds, (ibid., p. 154.)

As we have noted, the creation of a reliable power source for electric vehicles is one of the major obstacles impeding their commercial development. The bottom-line quandary that continues to plague battery-technology development centres around petrol’s privileged relationship with energy. Petrol is valuable because of its massive energy density. Or to put the battery researcher’s problem into perspective, a kilogram of petrol offers an energy potential of 13,000 watt-hours; the lead-acid equivalent holds a miserable 50 watt-hours of energy. For the moment there appears to be no contest.

The decision to leave the thorny problems of battery research to others effectively turned the vehicle project into little more than a marketing exercise. By opting to base his design around existing power supplies, Sinclair avoided addressing problems the solutions to which demanded genuine technical innovation. Having abandoned any pretence of technological advance, the only unanswered questions facing Sinclair concerned public demand and economies of production. Could the public be persuaded that it needed a three-wheeled electric moped that came on like an invalid car? Could such a product be manufactured cheaply enough to be commercially viable?

By the beginning of 1983, the development of the Sinclair vehicle had reached the point where serious investment was required if the product was ever to reach the marketplace. However, corporate support was conspicuous in its absence. The phenomenal success of the ZX81 had finally enabled a Sinclair company to make its presence felt in the high street; there was every indication that the Spectrum’s imminent launch would ensure a domination of the home-computer market for the foreseeable future. Company and consumer had developed a clear sense of corporate identity; it was an image that centred on low-cost home computers, and had absolutely nothing to do with electric trikes.

Even Sinclair couldn’t remain oblivious to his colleagues’ mounting anxiety as they watched their mentor’s challenging diversion rapidly move towards a production-line reality. Although on a one-to-one basis Sinclair could be chillingly convincing about the project’s potential, the collective doubt of a normally uncritically supportive staff persuaded him that there was no point risking corporate stability unnecessarily. As we have seen, in January 1983 Sinclair solved his problem by selling off a small percentage of his personal holdings in the company. At a time when the value of Sinclair Research shares were at their peak, this little deal provided him with cash-in-hand to the tune around £12m March saw the incorporation of a new company, Sinclair Vehicles, whose activities would be financed by an initial investment of £8.6m of the revenue from the share sale. Although we were unable to trace any record of money changing hands following the transfer of vehicle development to Sinclair Vehicles, there can be little doubt that the move would have been greeted with relief by the doubting hordes at Research. From now on the parent company could continue to consolidate its success in splendid isolation, securely insulated from the economic consequences of a shaky vision.

In March 1983, Sinclair managed to persuade ex-DeLorean henchman Barrie Wills to take care of the day-to-day running of Sinclair Vehicles. Although the new managing director soon discovered that he was overlord of a company without a product, rumours of further legislative modifications boded well for the future. The company learned that ‘electrically assisted pedal cycles’ were to be singled out for special treatment under the law. Although owners of such machines would be constrained by a 15 mph speed limit, they would also be exempt from insurance, road tax and a driving licence. Sinclair’s vehicle design was modified accordingly.

Making use of his industry contacts, Wills ended up placing the contract for the final stages of the C5’s development with Lotus. Work on the project was finalized towards the end of 1983, and the new few months were devoted to refining the vehicle’s bodywork, a task that was tackled by industrial designer Guy Desbarats. As far as the C5’s battery and motor were concerned, most of the development had been commissioned out of house. The bulk of the modifications to the battery had been accomplished by the combined efforts of Sinclair Vehicles and Oldham. Since Sinclair had decided that innovations in power-supply technology should be funded by battery manufacturers, one of the most critical elements of any electric-vehicle design was conspicuously neglected. The C5’s power supply is essentially a bog-standard (albeit lightweight) lead-acid battery. Sinclair claims that suitable modifications were incorporated into the design to compensate for the effects of repeated draining and recharging, but subsequent developments cast doubts on the adequacy of this work. The vehicle’s motor was manufactured in Italy by Polymotor, a subsidiary of Philips. Sinclair’s press release went to some lengths to point out that the Italian company had developed motors for ‘gyros, torpedoes and fast-response actuators’. What it didn’t explain was that the C5’s motor belonged to the less glamorous end of the Polymotor range. Sinclair’s ‘revolution in personal transportation’ would be driven by a modified washing-machine motor.

With product development close to completion, Sinclair turned his attention to finding a production plant for his vehicle. For a while he negotiated with DeLorean’s liquidators in an effort to buy the fallen tycoon’s sophisticated Northern Ireland plant. After a year of talks, the plan was finally scrapped. In the meantime, the company’s twenty-five staff had found a home for themselves in the Science Park, right next door to Warwick University where much of the early vehicle research was completed.

As a veteran of the development-grant circus, it comes as no surprise that Sinclair had his manufacturing problem solved by the Welsh Development Agency (WDA). Acting on behalf of Sinclair Vehicles, the agency persuaded Hoover that the company’s Merthyr Tydfil plant could painlessly adapt its production line to handle the demands of electric-trike manufacture. It seems certain that both the WDA and Hoover allowed themselves to be seduced by Sinclair’s wildly optimistic production projections of 200,000-500,000 units per year. For the Agency, the project offered the promise of jobs in an area crippled by unemployment; for Hoover, the contract offered a significant revenue on a high output and the prospect of more work in the future as the vehicle range expanded. As the project’s principal subcontractor, Hoover would be responsible for the bulk of C5 manufacture, with only the bodywork assembly commissioned elsewhere. (Because of the specialized equipment required, the C5’s pair of polypropylene injection mouldings became the responsibility of Linpac. According to the C5’s technical specifications, the vehicle’s body was the largest ever mass-produced polypropylene assembly.)

By now, Sinclair’s improbable coup with home computers had made his name synonymous with individual enterprise and national advance. However dubious the vehicle project looked on paper, with Clive Sinclair behind it there were few bold enough to commit their doubts to print. An unusually restrained Economist feature (25 June 1983) offers a taste of the pervasive mood of journalistic caution:

‘If it was anyone but Sinclair,’ said one competitor, ‘we’d say he was bonkers.’ But can a man who has made a fortune out of calculators and computers, and could double it on flat-screen televisions, be that crazy?

As far as the Welsh workforce and management were concerned, times were hard and there was very little incentive to look a gift horse in the mouth, however questionable its pedigree. The contract was considered important enough for Hoover to allocate a section of the Merthyr Tydfil plant exclusively for the production of the Sinclair vehicle. In addition, the company invested £100,000 in a customized production line for the project. By the end of 1984, the first batch of C5s trundled out and began their ill-fated quest for a non-existent market.

From a distance, the C5 resembles a giant plastic clog. In spite of the vast amounts of time and effort that went into the vehicle’s external design, at first glance its most memorable characteristic is its size. The C5 is small. Small, vulnerable and curiously provisional. When confronted with a C5, one’s thoughts invariably turn to morbid meditations on juggernauts. With overall dimensions of 5 feet 9 inches by 2 feet 5 inches by 2 feet 7 inches, there was little chance that the C5 would make an instant impression in traffic. In the critical onslaught that followed the launch, the majority of commentators voiced anxieties concerning the wisdom of driving such a diminutive form of transport in anything approaching heavy traffic:

In fact, I would not want to drive a C5 in any traffic at all. My head was on a level with the top of a juggernaut’s tyres, the exhaust fumes blasted into my face. Even with the minuscule front and rear lights on, I could not feel confident that a lorry driver so high above the ground would see me. Small wonder that one of the accessories listed in the C5 brochure is a high and bright-red reflecting mast, said by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to be a ‘must’. (Daily Telegraph, 11 January 1985.). 

There were many who maintained that the ‘Hi-Vis Mast’ should have been included as a standard feature.

Before moving on to the C5’s launch and its aftermath, it’s worth mentioning that Sinclair was not alone in his faith in the electric-powered option. Ignored by all but the specialist press, two companies were busily completing the development of three more electric vehicles, all of which were targeted for a 1985 launch. It should be stressed that none of the neglected trio posed a threat to Sinclair’s plans, since all were directed way up market with price tags to match their ambitions. However, in spite of being considerably more expensive than the Sinclair creation, none of the C5’s competitors boasted much in the way of technological advances. Like Sinclair, both the companies concerned had opted to design around the limitations of existing technology.

The electric-powered Whisper is an unremarkable-looking hatchback. Designed and marketed by a Dutch company called Whisper Electric Cars, the vehicle costs around £4000 and was launched in August 1985. At a cruising speed of 30 mph, the Whisper travels 50 miles before requiring a recharge. The other company involved in electric-vehicle development is the all-British HIL Electric. Like the Whisper, both the QT pick-up van and the U36 bubble car boast exteriors based around standard motor industry designs. To date (July 1986) none of these electric alternatives can be said to have made much of an impression on the market.

The launch of the C5 electric vehicle was expensive, glossy and mildly embarrassing. Like the majority of products from the Sinclair stable, the C5 was initially announced as being sold on an exclusively mail-order basis. However, this didn’t mean that Sir Clive planned a low-profile launch for his new baby. According to official statistics, Sinclair Vehicles sank £3m into a three-month Primary Contact promotion. The campaign included television slots and colour-supplement spreads and seemed to be directed at anyone who would listen:

Targeted broadly at the family audience, Sinclair believes that the C5 will appeal equally to the younger generation ... and to adults for activities such as urban commuting, shopping and getting to the railway station. (Sinclair Vehicles, press release, 10 January 1985.)

At first glance, the extravagant brochure promoting the new product appeared to offer the customary hallmarks of a standard Sinclair hype. However, behind the high-gloss pics lurked an undercurrent of desperation. Rather than promote the C5 as the future of urban transportation, the static tableaux of businessmen, housewives and their indispensable C5s served to accentuate the redundancy of the product. Apart from anything else, it was quite obvious that none of the featured models would be seen dead driving the contraption they were attempting to market. The accompanying text was slightly more convincing. Adopting a shamelessly heroic stance, it portrayed Sir Clive as a technologically enhanced David, fearlessly taming the giants of urban chaos:

Sinclair’s reputation is built on cutting giants down to size, turning impersonal tyrants into personal servants. Sinclair took a desktop calculator and put it in your pocket ... took the big-business computer and tucked it into your living room ... took the television set and made it smaller than a paperback. Now, with the C5, Sinclair Vehicles puts personal, private transportation back where it belongs - in the hands of the individual. (‘Sinclair C5 - A New Power in Personal Transport’.)