British sports car maker Zenos Cars has gone bust, Autocar reports. The Norfolk-based company confirmed that it was going into administration, saying that the downturn was brought about by lack of funding following a dip in trade and cancelled export orders from last year.
“It is with great disappointment that the board has had to take this step. We still believe that our products offer unrivalled affordable fun and we have already made very good progress in developing the next product in our strategy,” Zenos MD Mark Edwards said. The manufacturer has already appointed administrators, who are looking potential buyers for the business.
The company was founded in 2012 by former Caterham Cars CEO Ansar Ali and Edwards, who was the COO at Caterham. Both men were also in Lotus prior to their stint at Caterham. In 2015, Ali left Zenos, but has remained a shareholder.
Zenos, which takes its name from a combination of ‘zen’ to represent purity, and ‘os’, which in Latin loosely tranlates to ‘vertebra’, was set-up to offer an alternative to Lotus and Caterham offerings.
Its first car was the E10, a track-focused but road legal, open-top two-seater powered by a mid-mounted 200 hp 2.0 litre Ford engine. With a kerb weight of only 650 kg, performance figures included a 0-100 km/h time of under five seconds.
The report adds that in September last year, the company said it had delivered its 100th vehicle and stated that production slots for the rest of 2016 were accounted for, with orders going well into 2017. It had plans to introduce two new versions, the E11 (with a removable soft-top roof) and the E12, a fixed-roof coupe.
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It would be a quick way to develop your own car brand or to add a sports car to your current portfolio by just snapping up the bankrupt company. It would be an easy addition to the current Caterham product line (that would be a very big irony though), or someone in malaysia to take over and relocate the company in malaysia (the new Nusajaya track would be a great home for a sportscar company).
What does Lotus, Caterham & Zenos have in common ?! They all started by British but they all also ended the same way ie ICU.
Lets hope No one from M’sia come calling to throw Good $$$ into a dying brand like one of our Tycoon who throw Millions of pounds into Caterham & QPR just for personal
satisfaction/hobby.
It’s OK for him bcos it’s his own hard earn $$$ unlike some who keep on using public $$$/fund to bailout a failed entity.
U can dislike me but I’ll prefer & thank U for adding your comments here to generate some interest in a boring subject called Zenos. Thanks for reading & commenting. Cheers …
Any China mega conglomerate interested to swoop up this car brand?
Put a proper roof and 5+ years old mitubishi engine, and sell it cheap.