Nonetheless, Sir Clive Sinclair, who sold the world's first pocket calculator and first digital watch before making a fortune with pioneering cheap personal computers, insisted on the anniversary that he had no regrets about the C5.

"It began to get bad press and escalated," Sinclair said. "It became fashionable to mock it, which was a shame."

Unveiled to a bemused press on a snowy January 10, 1985 in London, the C5 was a tiny, single-seater, three-wheeled electric car of futuristic design, less than six feet (1.82 metres) long and just three feet (91 centimetres) high.

Taking advantage of a new law allowing electric vehicles to be driven on the roads by anyone aged 14 or above, without insurance, tax or a crash helmet, the C5 was expected by its inventor to sell 100,000 units in the first year alone.

However, despite some initial enthusiasm based largely on Sinclair's previous reputation as an inventor of genius, the bad press soon mounted, prompted largely by safety fears about using the slow, light and tiny machine on lorry-clogged public roads.

Newspapers dubbed the C5, which sold at the time for a fairly steep 399 pounds (570 euros, 750 dollars at current exchange rates), an "aerodynamic bathtub" and an "oversized electric skateboard".

An initially flurry of interest soon dwindled, and only about 12,000 were sold. Sinclair lost millions of pounds, and was forced to sell his entire company to a rival computer firm in 1986.

Sinclair insisted, however, on Monday that the C5s "weren't unpopular with the customers", blaming instead bad press for the failure.

"I think it was a bit early," he said of the invention.

"We launched it without preparing people for it and when something is radical and very different people sort of poke at it and try to find flaws."

The inventor, now 64, admitted that even nowadays people would probably not like to sit so low down on the road, although he stressed the electric vehicles were the future of motoring.

"Electric vehicles will take over, largely because fossil fuels are declining in availability and because of global warming," he said.

As is the case with many failures, a die-hard group of C5 enthusiasts has sprung up to champion the electric car and exchange technical tips or spare parts.

"I think they got the marketing wrong," said Roy Woodward, who runs the www.sinclairc5.com fan website.

"It should have been promoted as a leisure vehicle rather than a replacement to the car or the motorbike."

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