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
Sinclair C5 expensively) on the aerodynamics rather than the cycle technology around which the C1 was based. The weight of the vehicle increased to over , far more than Sinclair's desired specification. By March 1983, Sinclair and Wood Rogers had decided to stop the C1 programme. Wood Rogers comments that Ogle were convinced that the C1 would be a flop, telling Sinclair that it would not be fast enough, that its drivers would get wet when it rained and that the battery was not good enough. To meet the steadily escalating development costs of the vehicle, Sinclair decided to raise capital by