It’s watts inside that counts
were not first past the winning post – that honour went to a driver called William Yates.
The G D Mountfied factory in Maidenhead also unveiled an electric car in 1979 and even the Queen Mum hitched a lift in an electric car driven by assembly development manager George Hind when she went on a tour of the Jaguar works in Coventry in 1980. And in the same year PC Oliver Tayler, of the Devon and Cornwall police, road tested the electric-powered, bright yellow three-wheeled police car, dubbed the Flying Banana. It took to the streets of Torbay and could run for 35 miles on its three 12-volt batteries. It could be fully charged from an ordinary three-pin electric socket in nine hours. PC Tayler said he had heard no funny remarks about the threewheeler and said it was something of an ice-breaker during school visits.
Inventor Sir Clive Sinclair came up with the C5 vehicle in the 1980s. It was designed to cope with busy city traffic and first went into production at Merthyr Tydfil in Wales in 1984 before being launched on January 10, 1985.
The three-wheel, pedal-assisted electric vehicle attracted nicknames like Skinny Mini, Doodle-buggy and Hoover Hedgehog. It was even wrongly suggested it was powered by a washing-machine motor. It had a top speed of 15 miles an hour and cost £399, but only around 12,000 were ever produced. Sir Clive said at the launch: “It’s ideal for shopping, going to the office, going to school, any trip around town.”