Posted on 01/11/2015 12:54:06 PM PST by moose07
Sinclair C5 enthusiasts have been celebrating the 30th anniversary of the vehicle's launch.
In Bournemouth, owners gathered on the promenade on Sunday morning before riding from Boscombe Pier to Sandbanks.
The electric tricycles were launched by entrepreneur Sir Clive Sinclair on 10 January 1985 at Alexandra Palace in London.
Enthusiasts also gathered at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, Hampshire, on Saturday.
{snip}
'Drive to the pub'
Bournemouth C5 owner Paul Grice, who organised the seafront trip, said: "I started collecting them about six or seven years ago because I liked the look of them.
"I was actually looking at Sinclair computers and I was going through the ads and came across one of these Sinclair cars.
"It cost me £100 and now they are worth about £400 to £700 - I guess they hold their value but it's just a good bit of fun.
"You can drive them on the road with no insurance or tax - anyone can drive them over 14.
"I drive mine on the road sometimes to the pub or the chip shop, down the beach or around the gardens.
{snip}
"I had one recently in its box. In the 80s that's how they were delivered by Comet and Hoover - in a big box."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Very Cool!
The latest rendition, the C7, seats 2 adults and goes a bit faster. ;- )
Before there was the Segway i180, there were these.
And the Segway was supposed to be “It”, the “next big thing”.
Segway personal transporters are still around, but the streets and sidewalks are not exactly full of them.
Many a happy sunny day spent on that beach as a kid. :)
If I could just find a way to mount a 125cc Suzuki RM engine in there somehow.
LOL, YEAH! Weeeee!
From the Wiki:
From flop to cult
C5 enthusiasts gather at the Brooklands Museum.
A heavily modified C5 fitted with a jet engine.
Despite its lack of commercial success when it was first released, the C5 gained an unexpected degree of cult status in the later years.[61] Collectors began purchasing them as investment items,[86] reselling them for considerably more than their original retail price. One such investor, Adam Harper, bought 600 C5s from a film company as a speculative investment in 1987. He sold all but four within two years, selling them to customers who wanted a novel or more environmentally friendly form of transportation. He also found willing customers among drivers who had been banned from the road, as the C5 did not need a driving licence or vehicle tax.[63] According to Harper, C5s could be resold for as much as £2,500 – more than six times the original retail price.[87] By 1996, a Special Edition C5 in its original box was reported to be worth more than £5,000 to collectors.[88]
C5 owners began modifying their vehicles to achieve levels of performance far beyond anything envisaged by Sinclair. Adam Harper used one C5 as a stunt vehicle, driving it through a 70 ft (21 m) tunnel of fire,[88] and adapted another to run at 150 miles per hour (240 km/h), aiming to break a world land speed record for a three-wheeled electric vehicle and the British record for any type of electric vehicle.[89][90] He said later: “Up to 100 mph it’s like you’re running on rails, it’s really stable. Then at about 110 to 120 mph it starts getting tricky. At that point if a tyre blew up or something happened you would be surely dead.”[90]
Chris Crosskey, an engineer from Abingdon, set a record for the longest journey completed on a C5 on a trip to Glastonbury – 103 miles (166 km) miles away (”I nearly died of exhaustion”[91]) – and tried three times to drive one from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, a distance of 874 miles (1,407 km).[61] Another engineer, Adrian Bennett, fitted a jet engine to his C5,[92] while plumber Colin Furze turned one into a 5 ft (1.5 m)-high “monster trike” with 2 feet (0.61 m) wheels and a petrol engine capable of propelling it at 40 miles per hour (64 km/h).[93]
Reminds me of the ‘magnetic hybrid motorbike unveiled in Japan.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4GXH5Q3Rk
Looks very docile.
Put the front wheel back under the handlebars and soup up the torque , then it will be viable.
At least they are thinking. :)
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