35 Years ago today, the Sinclair C5 was released!

vanpeebles

vanpeebles

vanpeebles

Soldato
Joined
22 Aug 2004
Posts
7,607
35 Years ago today, the Sinclair C5 was released! Over 14,000 made, with companies such as Lotus behind the engineering. Hoover could make 50 an hour, and had the capacity to make 8000 a week. The completed C5's would roll off the assembly line and into their boxes.

A C10 and C15 road car was also in design, but never saw the light of day sadly.

Any fans or thoughts? :)

asc5.jpg
 
They were not much use on the road since they were too low down and really rather dangerous. (Like a recumbent/Hand bike)

However, they became quite popular in places like large warehouses and indeed, even ships, where people had to cover not insignificant distances as part of routine work.

The Motors were also very popular as drive trains for Robot Wars BattleBots.:cool:

I suppose the nearest modern equivalent would be the Twizzy (Which is stupidly expensive for what it is. The C5 while somewhat more limited only cost a grand in todays money)
 
The proposed C10 and C15 looked a lot like the Twizzy!

There is a great old newspaper clipped of an old Welsh woman who was banned from driving, so bought a C5 to ride to the club and back :D Quite a few stars had them back in the day for pootling round their big houses.
 
I used to see one quite regularly close to where I used to work back in the day (Rayleigh Weir roundabout) For the unenlightened, said roundabout was part of the A127 Southend Arterial road & it is by a country mile the busiest Road in South Essex & this was before the underpass was built 30 years ago. It used to cross the roundabout at peak traffic times & it was a miracle the drive ever made it on each occasion I saw it cross. I think the driver had a death wish somehow, rather him than me. :p
 
Grimley said:
I used to see one quite regularly close to where I used to work back in the day (Rayleigh Weir roundabout) For the unenlightened, said roundabout was part of the A127 Southend Arterial road & it is by a country mile the busiest Road in South Essex & this was before the underpass was built 30 years ago. It used to cross the roundabout at peak traffic times & it was a miracle the drive ever made it on each occasion I saw it cross. I think the driver had a death wish somehow, rather him than me. :p
Click to expand...

Haha, sounds fun! I’m still refurbishing mine, it’s being totally rebuilt frame upwards. Dunno if I’d go on the roads though! :)
 
Grimley said:
I used to see one quite regularly close to where I used to work back in the day (Rayleigh Weir roundabout) For the unenlightened, said roundabout was part of the A127 Southend Arterial road & it is by a country mile the busiest Road in South Essex & this was before the underpass was built 30 years ago. It used to cross the roundabout at peak traffic times & it was a miracle the drive ever made it on each occasion I saw it cross. I think the driver had a death wish somehow, rather him than me. :p
Click to expand...

The A127, the roundabout that isn't a roundabout, not driven on A127 for a while but always found that half roundabout funny, I guess it used to be a full roundabout back in the day.
 
/\/\ it was a full roundabout & so was the Fortune of War Roundabout back in the day. Both roundabouts were a traffic bottleneck at the time so the Weir is now an underpass. The Nevendon Junction (for Wickford & East Basildon) used to be a roundabout there too, They've all gone but it still gets congested at peak traffic times & there's always RTC's on that road too. There's been a 50mph speed limit just before the Fairglen interchange & it goes all the way to the Southend borough border (with Average speed cameras) but it doesnt help with the noise & the traffic. There's talk that the speed limit will be extended to the FOW roundabout & possibly all the way to the M25 but it will not solve anything. Widening the road will only encourage more traffic.
 
Grimley said:
/\/\ it was a full roundabout & so was the Fortune of War Roundabout back in the day. Both roundabouts were a traffic bottleneck at the time so the Weir is now an underpass. The Nevendon Junction (for Wickford & East Basildon) used to be a roundabout there too, They've all gone but it still gets congested at peak traffic times & there's always RTC's on that road too. There's been a 50mph speed limit just before the Fairglen interchange & it goes all the way to the Southend borough border (with Average speed cameras) but it doesnt help with the noise & the traffic. There's talk that the speed limit will be extended to the FOW roundabout & possibly all the way to the M25 but it will not solve anything. Widening the road will only encourage more traffic.
Click to expand...

I can imagine, never driven it at peak traffic times myself.
 
/\/\/\ Fortune of War roundabout was named after a pub that was on that roundabout (housing estate now). There was a fair few pubs on the A127 back in the day. Today there's Restaurant/pubs, a couple of fast food places & chain coffee shops.
 
Not sure there's much to celebrate really? It was seen as an embarrassment. It wasn't a bad idea to look at some sort of cheap personal transport, but it falls sort in so many areas.

He'd have been better off putting resources in the C10/C15, but the development costs would have been far greater.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom