Money Matters:
How much did it cost?
The C5 was launched in January 1985, initially for mail-order sales at £399, plus £29 delivery, making a total of £428.
By the Summer of 1985, Comet were selling C5s for immediate free delivery for £399.
By September 1985, when it was obvious that the C5 project was failing, Comet slashed the price of the C5 to £139.99 delivered.
After Sinclair Vehicles closed, a company in Liverpool bought the remaining 4500 complete C5s, and sold them for £699+VAT!
Sinclair Vehicles was initially financed by Clive Sinclair's sale of some of his shares in Sinclair Research, raising some £12 million.
After production stopped, Hoover, the C5 assembler, was still owed about £1.5 million by Sinclair Vehicles.
The best figures I can find add up like this:
£8.6m initial investment by Clive
Sinclair
£5.9m additional cash from Clive
£6.4m debts at liquidation
£1.5m owed to Hoover at liquidation
4500 C5s sold at liquidation, raising perhaps £400,000
That's a total investment of around £22m!
If 12,000 C5s were produced in total, and the project cost £22 million, each C5 cost £1833 to make!