Sinclair C5 Isetta, a 1960s Italian microcar. Sinclair built a full-scale mock-up of it; according to Wood Rogers, "it looked great. I specified open sides to keep the cost down and having no doors meant it escaped a lot of regulations too." The design is strikingly similar to the modern Renault Twizy electric vehicle; Wood Rogers comments that "you could put the C10 into production today and it would still look contemporary." At the time of the C5's launch, Sinclair described the C15 as having "a futuristic design with an elongated 'tear-drop' shape, a lightweight body made of self-coloured polypropylene and a
Sinclair C5 selling some of his own shares in Sinclair Research to fund a separate company that would focus on electric vehicles. A £12 million deal was reached in March 1983, of which £8.3 million was used to fund the establishment of the new Sinclair Vehicles company. Sinclair recruited Barrie Wills, a veteran former employee of the DeLorean Motor Company, to lead Sinclair Vehicles as its managing director. Although Wills initially expressed scepticism about the viability of an electric vehicle – his twenty-five years in the motor industry had convinced him that an electric car was never going to happen – Sinclair