Rumours of Zenos into administration..

Rumours of Zenos into administration..

Author
Discussion

Jesus

Original Poster:

14,673 posts

188 months

Monday 16th January 2017
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Rumours, but quite a few doing the rounds.
Anyone know anything for sure?

Hearing of redundancies.

MJK 24

5,648 posts

235 months

Monday 16th January 2017
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Read similar on another forum.

awg454

500 posts

215 months

Monday 16th January 2017
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I have posted it on the Zenos section staff where told lunchtime

MG CHRIS

9,077 posts

166 months

Monday 16th January 2017
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Well that wasn't a surprise. A car for a market which is so tiny its not worth the effort. Such a shame for the staff though.

DonkeyApple

54,934 posts

168 months

Monday 16th January 2017
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Sad for all the staff involved.

jayemm89

4,007 posts

129 months

Monday 16th January 2017
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I was told earlier by a friend and member of their staff this is true, the company was placed into administration as of yesterday.

A damn shame, it really seemed like things were going right for them.

Sid123

255 posts

176 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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It is a real shame.
I had the pleasure of working with the guys last year and they are a great bunch of very enthusiastic people.

Guybrush

4,330 posts

205 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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That's a shame; a brave attempt.

CaptainCosworth

5,832 posts

92 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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A shame, but I do think the market for expensive track day toys is very saturated, there's only so many people that can afford to spend £30k+ on something they'll only use for the occasional Sunday morning blast, and a handful of track days a year.

Lefty

16,132 posts

201 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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Shame. I agree with poster above: too small a market.


wildcat45

8,056 posts

188 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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I'm certainly not in the market for one, but I liked these little cars.

A great concept. Good on them for having the guts to try and pull this off.

There's a green one in Autotrafer with a PH logo on the back.

CraigyMc

16,333 posts

235 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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The Crack Fox said:
Really? Oh, bum.

They were great guys to deal with, the car is fantastic, and I really thought they had something going. Ansar (one of the owners) backed out last year, I think, and I wondered what was going on, then.

Good luck to the guys working there. I hope this doesn't deter others from creating great little cars in the UK.
It's the "cheap" bit of the equation that holes them below the waterline.
The only folk making money off cars built in the UK are at either globals with the scale to be making tens/hundreds of thousands of cars to amortise the costs, or are smaller players at the expensive end of their respective markets where the profit margins are healthy.

Small car company + cheap product made in Blighty = administration.

The single oddball is Ariel, but they neatly sidestepped it by having everything outsourced and just doing basic construction in house with very few staff.

Beefmeister

16,482 posts

229 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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Shame to hear of any small UK car company going under but as has been said they were particularly nice people to work with.

They put me and my photographer up in a nice hotel for a night and gave us an E10S to play with on track and road for 2 days, and sure it had its flaws but it was a really fun car.

Here's PHer trackdemon having some fun!


ads_green

838 posts

231 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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CaptainCosworth said:
A shame, but I do think the market for expensive track day toys is very saturated, there's only so many people that can afford to spend £30k+ on something they'll only use for the occasional Sunday morning blast, and a handful of track days a year.
That was only phase 1 of the plan.
Perfect the new carbon tub and chassis construction on basic road legal track car. Generates interest and hopefully brings some cash in.

The E11 (coupe) and E12 (roadster) are where it was really heading.
I've seen quite a few images of how the E11 was shaping up and it was stunning.

Olivera

7,068 posts

238 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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A shame, given it allegedly drove very well indeed. Unfortunately I always though it looked aesthetically ugly, in a hit every branch of the tree kind of way.

DonkeyApple

54,934 posts

168 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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CraigyMc said:
It's the "cheap" bit of the equation that holes them below the waterline.
The only folk making money off cars built in the UK are at either globals with the scale to be making tens/hundreds of thousands of cars to amortise the costs, or are smaller players at the expensive end of their respective markets where the profit margins are healthy.

Small car company + cheap product made in Blighty = administration.

The single oddball is Ariel, but they neatly sidestepped it by having everything outsourced and just doing basic construction in house with very few staff.
Essentially, yes but the latter model of small co, lower end product and built in U.K. does work but not with just a domestic market. If you look at the firms that manage it they all have significant exports.

I think Zenos differed considerably from the likes of Ginetta in that the Zenos product was good. I suspect that had they been able to secure enough funding to keep going for the time it takes to build exports then they would have possibly survived.

With Ansar having gone last year I guess it might be plausible that the company gets pheonixed?

ads_green

838 posts

231 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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I think they were selling exports at a rate of 2:1 already

winshent

1,170 posts

194 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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Such a shame especially as they were only featured on The Grand Tour only a few weeks ago...




Beefmeister

16,482 posts

229 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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winshent said:
Such a shame especially as they were only featured on The Grand Tour only a few weeks ago...
Too little too late sadly.

Best thing that could happen now is that Caterham buys Zenos and stick a Coupe body on the E10R.

anonymous-user

53 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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A real shame, there was something of a waiting list for factory cars and things seemed healthy enough. I guess they just couldn't secure the finance to keep on going to the point where the company could become self-sustaining. I was definitely shortlisting an E10S for 2018.

Hopefully some sort of buyout takes place.