Sinclair C5 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?" His strategy was notably successful; Ellar sold nearly 7,000 C5s at up to £700 each, far more (and at a higher price) than Sinclair had ever managed. 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
Clive Sinclair carried on public transport. Sinclair's father and grandfather were engineers; both had been apprentices at Vickers the shipbuilders. His grandfather George Sinclair was an innovative naval architect who got the "paravane", a mine sweeping device, to work. George Sinclair's son, George William "Bill" Sinclair, wanted to take religious orders or become a journalist. His father suggested he train as an engineer first; Bill became a mechanical engineer and remained in the field. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939 he was running his own machine tools business in London, and later worked for the Ministry of Supply. Clive