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R O A D
T R A C K
R A C E
S U M M E R 2 0 1 6
B U I L T F R O M W O O D ?
M A R K E D W A R D S
tom line is that Caterham needs to
sell volume and the business has
serviced well on somewhere be-
tween four and 500 hundred units
per annum. One way to sustain or
grow is to look to new markets.
The Seven is 50 years old but we
didn’t want to do a space frame
as it’s been done to bits and there
are newer technologies available.
I can understand why they are
seeking new markets, the homolo-
gation landscape is tough and at
some point the Seven will be able
to meet all the requirements in the
future.
“Caterham and Lotus are our
competitors but I still have a
heart for it. The Zenos is what it is
because of the journey I’ve had at
Lotus and Caterham. Mid-engine
performance is the architecture of
Lotus while the low cost of owner-
ship comes from Caterham.”
WORKING BACKWARDS
Zenos’ sales goals are much
more modest than Caterham’s,
but having started production last
year they will have built 80 cars
by the end of 2016, with a 50%
increase in that number by the end
of next year.
In order to keep the price down,
Edwards and the team at Zenos
set a retail price and worked
backwards from that to create the
best car they could. Edwards says:
“Most manufacturers produce the
car they want and then work out
the price from parts, labour, profit
and VAT. We worked backwards,
starting with £25k. We had power
targets but still wanted to deliver
a car that went for the retail price
we wanted.
“That was the hardest thing. We
never set out to do a carbon tub or
an aluminium spine, but we knew
what efficiency we needed from
the chassis. The tub did the tor-
sion absolutely perfectly but the
beam bending wasn’t there; when
we put the two together it was the
best of both worlds and met the
mechanical targets.”
Zenos has no plans to make a kit
car and instead is focusing on its
portfolio of fully built sports cars.
A large portion of the market is
export, meaning Zenos cars are
popping up all over the world, as
Edwards explains: “We are in the
US, France, Benelux, Asia, Japan,
China, Italy, Switzerland. All are
doing well, so export is strong.”
The name E10 was simply a
project name that just seemed to
fit. Edwards says: “My surname is
Edward and it’s the 10th product
I have worked on. It was a project
name and we spent ages trying to
find a name but it was called that
so much that the design guys just
said “what’s wrong with E10?” So
we went with that and then added
an S and now the R.”
The car was inspired by a num-
ber of other brands, not just Cater-
ham and Lotus. Edwards explains
the goals for the E10: “Most of it
was inspired by Caterham and Lo-
tus, which are the immediate com-
petitors. The brief was based on
the ride and handling of a Lotus,
the cost of ownership and afforda-
bility of a Caterham, with better
usability without going quite as
far as the MX-5. Take the torsion
rigidity of the chassis, for example.
The Lotus Elise is about 10,000
nm per degree so we set that as a
target and then exceeded it.”
The award-winning rigid chas-
It was also
affordable and
driven but how
do we deliver
this car for 25k?