The press was given an opportunity to try out the C5 but this proved to be, as Adamson and Kennedy put it, "an unqualified disaster".[42] A large number of the demonstration machines did not work, as the assembled journalists soon discovered.[42] The Sunday Times called the C5 a "Formula One bath-chair"; its reporter "had travelled five yards outdoors when everything went phut and this motorised, plastic, lozenge rolled to a halt with all the stationary decisiveness of a mule".[43] The Guardian's reporter had a flat battery after only seven minutes,[44] while Your Computer found that the C5 could not cope with the slopes at Alexandra Palace: "The 250 watt electric motor which drives one of the back wheels proved incapable of powering the C5 up even the gentlest slopes without using pedal power.