Sinclair C5 The C5 would be available initially by mail order at a cost of £399 and would subsequently be sold via high-street stores. 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 – in the hands of the individual." The photographs accompanying the text showed housewives and teenagers driving the C5 to
Sinclair C5 a snow- and ice-covered hill – 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. The "Financial Times" called it "the worst possible timing to launch what was proclaimed to be a serious, road-going vehicle". Sinclair's biographer Rodney Dale describes it as "a calculated (or miscalculated) risk", pointing out 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