Thursday 5th September 2013

Zenos Project E10 - exclusive

Heard the one about the new British sports car company? Not this one...

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If Zenos Cars is a name you haven’t heard before those of the people behind it may sound a little more familiar. Ansar Ali, ex-Caterham boss, is the best known of a team combining expertise from across the British sports car industry and now looking to strike out on its own with an all-new product, revealed exclusively here on PistonHeads.  

Chassis components arrived just the night before

Now, at this point your ‘seen it all before’ meter is probably starting to twitch. But having had a peek at the basis for the Zenos’s first test mule it’d seem there’s more to this project than most. Especially with today’s confirmation the firm has won funding from the Niche Vehicle Network, backed by the Technology Strategy Board, Office for Low Emission Vehicles and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Starting with the Project E10, the Zenos business plan has been thoroughly costed and thought out before leaving the drawing board. The basic recipe looks familiar; it’s an Elise-proportioned, back to basics and roofless sports car with clear track pretensions, a c. 200hp mid-mounted, transverse 2.0-litre engine driving the rear wheels and a target kerb weight of 650kg for a power to weight ratio of over 300hp per tonne.

The Ford-supplied engine is a direct-injection, normally-aspirated unit that’s effectively an Ecoboost without the turbo and badged in some markets as a Duratec HE Ti-VCT. A generation on from the familiar HE420 Duratec used by Caterham and others, it has the same oversquare dimensions and revvy nature but also features variable valve timing. More powerful supercharged variants will follow but for now Zenos is keeping it simple. Think something along the lines of a Lotus 2-Eleven, Vuhl 05, KTM X-Bow, a modernist Seven or Ariel Atom and you’re on the right path.

Basic ergonomics decided with wooden buck

Thing is, those cars already have their niches and the Zenos is going to need a USP to stand out. That comes from a neat and cost-conscious design based around an extruded aluminium spine with a tub and bodywork made from recycled carbon sheet sandwiching a honeycomb of … chopped down McDonalds drinking straws. Sounds bonkers until you learn it costs a tenth of ‘regular’ carbon and can be manipulated, joined and shaped as required. It might not have the bling of beautifully aligned weaves and sumptuous resins but there’s a pleasing unpretentiousness and cleverness about the Zenos approach that entirely suits the car’s role.

Hence the name, a combination of ‘zen’ and ‘os’, the latter derived from the latin for bone. Every day’s a school day and all that.  

Everything is designed to be easily replaceable too so although the wheels are fully enclosed they’re in effect covered by individual mudguards rather than large clamshells that won’t cost a fortune if you have an off at a trackday. Likewise the chassis’ simplicity means even a really heavy shunt won’t break the bank and write the car off.

Recycled carbon saves weight and costs

At the time of our visit the Zenos existed in two forms – the freshly assembled mule chassis based around a fabricated prototype for the extruded ‘spine’ and a wooden buck for checking seat and control positions, shimmed up to represent the ride height of the mule once on its wheels. Pinned on the walls around both were print outs of detailed CAD drawings while boxes of tyres, wheels, springs and two crated engines awaited installation into the first prototypes. The sense of anticipation was palpable, all three of the team red-eyed but buzzing from an all-nighter to assemble the mule chassis for our visit.

Zenos has the backing of some serious industry suppliers too, nearby Multimatic providing much of the development and parts supply muscle primarily from Ford. And today’s announcement of a government funded grant from the Niche Vehicle Network to support the R&D work on the innovative chassis design gives the project real momentum and technical credibility.

And PH will be there every step of the way too. More on this in due course but Zenos is keen to involve the target audience in the development of the car. And that’s where you’ll come in. Watch this space.

[NDT]

Interesting.
I would guess that their target niche is "lighter than the Elise, less rabid (and cheaper) than the X-bow and Atom)"
Would like to know the target price as this will be critical...

[NDT]

BoRED S2upid said:

Needs to be very sub £30k in my book more like £20k.

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I can't see that business case working.

[NDT]

I'd guess the recycled carbon sheet bodywork is not there for structural rigidity (given the tub).
Probably slightly stiffer than GRP for less weight, particularly with the straw-filled section.