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 until late 1979 that Sinclair returned to electric vehicle development. Around Christmas that year, he approached Tony Wood Rogers, an ex-Radionics employee, to carry out consultancy work on "a preliminary investigation into a personal electric vehicle". The brief was to assess the options for producing a one-person vehicle which would be a replacement for a moped and would have a maximum speed of . Although Wood Rogers was initially reluctant, he was intrigued by the idea of an electric vehicle and agreed to help Sinclair. The vehicle was dubbed the C1 (the C standing for Clive). He built a number