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With personal computers, Mr. Sinclair has applied his creativity to technologies that have become available for commercialization, such as electronics, semiconductors, and software. The same cannot be said for his next ambitious venture: electric vehicles.
Mr. Sinclair believed that electric cars were the future of transportation, but he was far ahead of the technology and economics that would one day make them possible. In 1985 he introduced the C5, a vehicle aptly described as a powered golf cart. Sold for £399 or about $450, it had a top speed of 15 miles per hour, a range of 20 miles and pedals to assist on slopes. Mr Sinclair described it as a step towards a full-scale electric car. “The C5 is the first of a family of electric vehicles,” he said.
By 1985 he had hoped to sell 100,000 of his electric vehicles. But only about 4,500 were sold, and after investing most of his own money in the venture, the business was shut down by year’s end. When Sinclair’s computer sales began to decline and money was short, Mr. Sinclair sold his computer business to Amstrad, another British personal computer manufacturer, in 1986.
Mr. Sinclair was endearing to the British public, in part because he embodied the classic British type – the eccentric inventor or the complementary term “boffin”. His interests and tastes were very diverse. He collected modern art but was also a lover of classical music and poetry, particularly those of William Butler Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Frost.
His days, described in The Times Magazine article in 1985, usually started with a six- or seven-mile run at 6:30 a.m. in London’s Hyde Park (He completed several New York marathons.) “I get the day going by running,” he said. I can think about a job problem or a lesson, but I can also think about women, the weather, or poetry.”
In addition to his daughter, he was survived by his sons Crispin and Bartholomew; five grandchildren; and two grandchildren. His two marriages ended in divorce.
Mr. Sinclair had been inventing until shortly before he died, Mrs. Sinclair said, “because that’s what she loved to do.”
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