Zenos Cars is a British automotive company that produces high-performance, light-weight sports cars. Based in Wymondham, Norfolk, UK, the company designs, manufactures and sells three variants of the Zenos E10 car. In January 2017 Zenos went into administration with staff made redundant but the assets were purchased by a consortium in March 2017. The company was founded in Norfolk in 2012. The founders, Ansar Ali and Mark Edwards, had worked together before at Lotus Cars and later at Caterham Cars. Edwards and Ali believed there a gap in the market for lightweight, contemporary high-performance sports cars that affordable to purchase and to run. Before the company’s first product line, the E10 series, designed, the founders agreed on a price point that
Established
2013
Headquarters
Wymondham, United Kingdom
would attractive to potential customers, and determined if a clean-sheet design could produced and sold at such a level. The development phase of Zenos’s first series of models included driving days with deposit-holders and potential customers, with the aim of ensuring that drivers and passengers would be both comfortably accommodated and fully engaged.
Matt Windle, Operations Director, joined the company in October 2015, bringing production expertise gained during a seven-year spell as Principal Engineer at Tesla, as well as through his role as Chief Engineer, Body at Caterham Technology and Innovation (CTI), and positions at Lotus Cars, Nissan, Volvo and Daewoo. Chris Weston, Head of Development, played a key role in engineering the car and readying it for production. On 16 January 2017, following a string of cancelled export orders, Zenos placed into administration. Begbies Traynor (London) LLP, the administrators, stated they open to speaking with parties interested in securing the future of the company, and in March 2017 a consortium led by Alan Lubinsky’s AC Cars acquired the company and assets.
Models:
Zenos E10:
The Zenos E10 a mid-engined sports car designed and produced by the British manufacturer Zenos Cars. First announced to the press in September 2013, pre-production car made available to the press in October 2014. The car features an aluminium ‘spine’ to which a composite passenger ‘tub’ and front and rear subframes attached. The ‘spine’ is believed to the largest single aluminium extrusion used in any road car, with a torsional stiffness in excess of 10,000 Nm/degree. The composite ‘tub’ of the E10 formed of a ‘sandwich’ that comprises athermoset plastic core contained between sheets of carbon fibre. The latter utilise pieces of carbon fibre that have discarded in other processes. It estimated that the resulting material delivers 70% of the mechanical performance of ‘virgin’ carbon fibre at significantly lower cost.
Partners
Zenos Cars has used a number of partners in the design and development of its products. They include: Drive – exterior and interior design; Multimatic Technical Centre Europe (MTCE) – chassis design; Ford and Hendy Power – powertrain package supply Specialist Control Systems – ECU development Avon Tyres Alcon Components – brakes and clutches; OZ Racing – wheels; Titan Motorsport – design and production of key components; Bilstein – shock absorbers; and Tillett Racing Seats. Zenos Cars has also received support from the Niche Vehicle Network, and from the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership through the Growing Business Fund.
