Ground Zero

In 2008, I wrote the article below for a cycling publication. I reproduce it here in honour of the late Clive Sinclair, without whom...

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Like every car driver, truck driver, bus driver and pilot, I started my career on wheels on a bike. Amongst other things, I can now also confess to having on my driver’s CV a stint on that most mental of 1980s anti-icons, the Sinclair C5, Sir Clive’s moment of madness that will be carved onto his headstone. But also the vehicle in which I had my first foray into powered driving.

There may be some unfamiliar with the unique charms of the C5, which was a low riding tricycle that relied partially on reclined pedal power for locomotion, made of molded plastic, steered by standard handlebars mounted under the knees. Right from the outset, this is an unnatural position, and we all know that you can still get a bike these days that relies on a variant of this arrangement. But let’s not kid ourselves. Those bikes are awful, and riding them is madness.

As was the C5, which gave its rider a vantage point barely half a metre above the tarmac, with no integrated sidespray protection or ballast, the latter of which I’ll come to in a minute.

As a youngster in 1985, I was quite keen to have a go whilst holidaying in the relative safety of Millport, off the west of Scotland, famed in Scottish lore as being a haven for occasional cyclists. With a thriving hire trade, most families would circumnavigate the island’s single perimeter road in under an hour. A local entrepreneur believed as Clive did, that the future was three-wheeled, and tried to supplant the bicycle with the new low rise, tricycled wave of the future. In a converted villa turned into a B&B, his back garden was now car park to 25 or so of these monstrosities. My brother and I turned up bright and early one Sunday morning, in our innocence mistaking his gin soaked, unshaven, hungover grumpiness for tiredness.

He took our money, directed us roughly towards two of the wedge shaped things, handed them over, and went back to bed. We hit the road in unbridled glee, unaware of the shame, ignominy, yet uniquely iconic venture we were about to engage in.

Millport’s main (almost only) road was still quiet, and we had it to ourselves, trying to get familiar with this oddest of sensations. The plastic seat left an immediate numbing pain in the bone of the arse. The angle of the handlebars meant getting a grip on the brakes was tough. The steering was direct from a child’s scooter. But wait. What’s this button, there?

If you have seen The Living Daylights, when 007 hits the afterburner on his Aston Martin on the frozen lake, then you’ll get some idea of what a shock to an eleven year old boy’s system it was to suddenly be powered forward under his own steam on the open road for the first time. And rear wheel drive, no less. With your bum only three inches from the road, the illusion of speed is more convincing than the reality, but the sudden lack of control, combined with unbridled exhilaration, was genuinely akin to the surprising and unexpected pleasure of a first orgasm. And if we all remember that, don‘t we?

So suddenly, oh my god, I am at 9 volt battery propelled warp factor 20kms an hour, and my legs aren’t even moving. Oh, the freedom. Oh, the open road! I am eye level with the seats on the public benches, and make out the wee rabbits in the adjacent field. I can go anywhere. The world is mine. And I don’t even need to be fit. Bliss.

Is it possible that my later love of driving, cars, trans-European road trips and the love of powered propulsion stemmed from that one moment of unbridled novelty? When the world shifted from black and white into colour, like Dorothy stepping into the magical land of Oz? Like a kiss from the road. Either way, the pure, pre-pubescent adrenaline-charged exhilaration was unbounded, and in the child’s mistaken sense of innocence and invulnerability, I powered on, intoxicated by the unending open road. I was only going at little more than jogging pace. But in my minds eye, a red cape flowed from my shoulders, and a painted ’S’ for Stevie adorned my chest. Even now, some days driving, I swear it can still be seen through my shirt. For nearly one brief hour, I believed I could fly.

The Sinclair C5 had a spider's worth of Achilles heels, which is quite a feat considering it had only three extremities on the ground. It’s famed inability to be seen in any form of traffic rendered it as certain a method of suicide as can be found on any roads occupied by buses and trucks. It was insufficiently robust, I reckon, to sustain a direct hit even from a pedestrian, and its utter lack of suspension of any kind meant hitting a piece of grit at the wrong angle was, if not hazardous, at least painful. But those aren’t the heels I’m talking about.

Millport is mostly flat, but there are some gentle slopes. In my pre-driving school notions of road use, garnered mostly from Starsky and Hutch and the Dukes of Hazzard, cars did what their driver wanted them to do, as if by force of will. Incidental details like traction, power, momentum, balance and various other aspects of the truths of physics had not yet entered my head. Which is why I thought a U-turn whilst in a power assisted freewheel down one of Millport’s little slopes seemed like quite a fun thing to attempt, in a fairground sort of way. Perhaps I thought I could approximate a power slide.

In a C5? Mental…

What I did end up achieving was nothing less than my first barrel roll, literally obtaining my kiss from the road neatly down the left side of my head. At age 11, I think I weighed a good deal more than the damn C5, and despite the low rise position, the rider is very definitely seated?on?the thing, and not in it. I claim the excuse of ignorance in not realising I was going to end up grinding my face on the tarmac, but I believe seriously I would have had a better chance trying to make the turn in a plastic sledge. Or on a bucket.

Chastened, humbled, bleeding just a little and nearly - but not quite - crying from the shock of it, I pedalled the thing back to beardy hangover man, who either didn’t notice the scrape, or didn’t care. Perhaps he sensed his business was inevitably pointed the wrong way down the tubes. I doubt he’ll remember anything particular about that day at all, and he’ll have no memory of me. As insignificant as it was for him, for me, that day represented the moment I crested the mountain and saw the vast continent beyond. Powered driving. Pandora’s Box, opened irreversibly. I cycled again, many times, but I had seen a new world, and its vision couldn’t be erased.

Poor Clive is still derided for his error with the C5, but I can sort of see what he was trying to do. He wanted to build a bridge between cars and bikes. In one sense, he achieved it for me. And who among us could argue that a bridge of any kind between these two form of transport isn’t badly needed?

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