RE: Zenos sells 100th car

RE: Zenos sells 100th car

Friday 23rd September 2016

Zenos sells 100th car

It's not just the old fashioned British sports cars that are proving popular!



So just as Caterham celebrates its sold out retro special Sprint, Zenos is marking the sale of its 100th car 18 months after selling its first. We just can't get enough lightweight sports cars at the moment!

One happy customer!
One happy customer!
The car in question, a Soul Red E10 R, has been purchased by existing Zenos owners Matthew and Georgina Streeter. They have upgraded from an E10 S and, as you can see, they are both very pleased with their latest acquisition! The car features a commemorative plaque to mark its place in Zenos history.

Interestingly all Zenos build slots for 2016 are allocated, with just a few said to be remaining for the first quarter of 2017. MD Mark Edwards said "We are delighted to see the popularity of the Zenos E10 series continuing to grow". With the E10 now available in 10 markets across three continents, let's hope that success can go even further.

Author
Discussion

DannyB2007

Original Poster:

187 posts

199 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
quotequote all
Fantastic, congratulations to them all!

lord trumpton

7,321 posts

125 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
quotequote all
very nice

redroadster

1,729 posts

231 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
quotequote all
Great ,another British firm doing well seems we can do the specialist market well two fingers up to the non brexit league.

buckline

377 posts

162 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
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Good on them.

Ozzie Osmond

21,189 posts

245 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
quotequote all
redroadster said:
Great, another British firm doing well seems we can do the specialist market well two fingers up to the non brexit league.
What a stupid comment. Selling 100 shed-built cars has precisely zero material significance in terms of the overall UK economy.

Ozzie Osmond

21,189 posts

245 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
quotequote all
buckline said:
Good on them.
Yup, good to see them finding customers. Not sure I'd be tempted away from the Lotus shop though for that type of car.

MikeGalos

261 posts

283 months

Thursday 22nd September 2016
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redroadster said:
Great ,another British firm doing well seems we can do the specialist market well two fingers up to the non brexit league.
Wow. 100 cars in a year and a half. Yeah. That's a global triumph of the return of the UK to being a major player in the world auto industry.

After all, the world auto market is only 74,000,000 cars per year. And the largest current UK owned, UK made producer is Aston-Martin/Lagonda who makes nearly 6,000 cars per year. Add in Morgan and LTI taxis and McLaren (If Apple doesn't buy them) and you're up to a good 10,000 cars and a whopping 0.014% of the world market. And Zenos's doing "well" enough to get to 100 per YEAR adds a big 0.00014% to that!

Why with that AM/L head start and a growth of 100 per year that's only a thousand years to get up to being 1% of the world market.

(Of course, that's assuming you don't mind not having any actual trading partners who take the cars without country specific versions since you don't think Brexit will hurt those massive sales growth figures.)

likesachange

2,630 posts

193 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
^^^ That's a very negative comment.

Your presuming they are marketing the car against x5's, modeo's, clio''s etc?!?

What percentage of the cars out there are ultra lightweight low budget sports cars??

How many atoms, caterhams, westfields etc are sold a year that are well established companies??

I'd say 100 in 18month for a relatively unknown brand is mighty impressive !

Edited by likesachange on Friday 23 September 13:46

TekoTime

96 posts

95 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
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Our biggest car manufacturer here in New Zealand makes 10 cars per year, and they're a well established company. 100 cars in the first 18 months seems pretty good to me.

swisstoni

16,855 posts

278 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
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MikeGalos said:
redroadster said:
Great ,another British firm doing well seems we can do the specialist market well two fingers up to the non brexit league.
Wow. 100 cars in a year and a half. Yeah. That's a global triumph of the return of the UK to being a major player in the world auto industry.

After all, the world auto market is only 74,000,000 cars per year. And the largest current UK owned, UK made producer is Aston-Martin/Lagonda who makes nearly 6,000 cars per year. Add in Morgan and LTI taxis and McLaren (If Apple doesn't buy them) and you're up to a good 10,000 cars and a whopping 0.014% of the world market. And Zenos's doing "well" enough to get to 100 per YEAR adds a big 0.00014% to that!

Why with that AM/L head start and a growth of 100 per year that's only a thousand years to get up to being 1% of the world market.

(Of course, that's assuming you don't mind not having any actual trading partners who take the cars without country specific versions since you don't think Brexit will hurt those massive sales growth figures.)
How many countries have any home-owned car industry AT ALL?
Very few if you trace it back to the real owners.

X5TUU

11,910 posts

186 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
likesachange said:
That's a very negative comment.

Your presuming they are marketing the car against x5's, modeo's, clio''s etc?!?

What percentage of the cars out there are ultra lightweight low budget sports cars??

How many atoms, caterhams, westfields etc are sold a year that are well established companies??

I'd say 100 in 18month for a relatively unknown brand is mighty impressive !
I 100% agree with you and the other positive posters here ... I think though if this was lotus or tvr or any brand which people know comments would be reversed and the owners would be hailed as heroes ad nauseam but as it's a relatively unknown then lets lambast them ... it's the Ph way ... pathetic really!

Even if they'd only sold 50, think of the jobs created (may not be many but it's still job creation, and that's not including supply chain!)

braddo

10,399 posts

187 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
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The negative comments are responding to the stupid comment linking this to Brexit.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing about this being a great milestone for Zenos.

knitware

1,473 posts

192 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
I saw this manufacturer at the 'London Motor Show' this year. My memory of them was an angry employee walking around the car who was telling, sometimes shouting, at children not to touch the car and dads taking the kids and walking off. I can understand this to a degree but If I were to display a vehicle from a relatively new company I would want dads with their kids to climb all over it, I would expect that show car to need a polish afterwards. I would want to portray a company who embraces kids with dads to have a good look, poke, bounce and sit in the car. I got the impression that the company was offish and grumpy, I would have expected them to be warm and fun and actively encouraged whoever to paw all over the car. Maybe if they were a little more welcoming then they may have sold more.

To offer some perspective, the Bentley stand had kids all over their car, perhaps the Zenos is brittle.

swisstoni

16,855 posts

278 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
knitware said:
I saw this manufacturer at the 'London Motor Show' this year. My memory of them was an angry employee walking around the car who was telling, sometimes shouting, at children not to touch the car and dads taking the kids and walking off. I can understand this to a degree but If I were to display a vehicle from a relatively new company I would want dads with their kids to climb all over it, I would expect that show car to need a polish afterwards. I would want to portray a company who embraces kids with dads to have a good look, poke, bounce and sit in the car. I got the impression that the company was offish and grumpy, I would have expected them to be warm and fun and actively encouraged whoever to paw all over the car. Maybe if they were a little more welcoming then they may have sold more.

To offer some perspective, the Bentley stand had kids all over their car, perhaps the Zenos is brittle.
I attended that show and it was a bit of a nightmare if I'm honest. The kids and parents did not give a t*ss and treated the everything like a playground. I think there were a few sorry exhibitors after that one.

knitware

1,473 posts

192 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
swisstoni said:
I attended that show and it was a bit of a nightmare if I'm honest. The kids and parents did not give a t*ss and treated the everything like a playground. I think there were a few sorry exhibitors after that one.
It was a bit tight in there wasn't it and HOT! Maybe you're right and the chap had bits broken off etc, I can understand his frustration. Good luck to them anyway!

phil4

1,203 posts

237 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
knitware said:
I can understand this to a degree but If I were to display a vehicle from a relatively new company I would want dads with their kids to climb all over it,
Odd you should say that. The past couple of years I've taken my car to Le Mans, it's had quite a bit of interest from passing pedestrians. I make a point of letting kids sit in, pretend to drive and let their parents take pictures. It makes the kids happy, it makes the parents happy. So why not.

I don't however let them climb all over it.

Monkeylegend

26,227 posts

230 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
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That's 1.2 cars a week, can't be much profit in that.

XTR2Turbo

1,533 posts

230 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
I wonder how they are performing against their original forecast / business plan.

My assumption with these type of cars is that there was always an initial surge of early adopters wanting something unusual but the challenge was sustaining that in the following years.

I would have thought that their price point needed more quantity than this to be viable. I do recall that they mentioned 500 cars a year at a PH open day I attended.

Either way good luck to them.

Camoradi

4,285 posts

255 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
Amazed at the negative comments... frown

If UK workers can be employed making high price, low volume products then the country will prosper. Competing in the mass market is a race to the bottom in terms of productivity and wages.

Well done Zenos

SpudLink

5,671 posts

191 months

Friday 23rd September 2016
quotequote all
swisstoni said:
knitware said:
I saw this manufacturer at the 'London Motor Show' this year. My memory of them was an angry employee walking around the car who was telling, sometimes shouting, at children not to touch the car and dads taking the kids and walking off. I can understand this to a degree but If I were to display a vehicle from a relatively new company I would want dads with their kids to climb all over it, I would expect that show car to need a polish afterwards. I would want to portray a company who embraces kids with dads to have a good look, poke, bounce and sit in the car. I got the impression that the company was offish and grumpy, I would have expected them to be warm and fun and actively encouraged whoever to paw all over the car. Maybe if they were a little more welcoming then they may have sold more.

To offer some perspective, the Bentley stand had kids all over their car, perhaps the Zenos is brittle.
I attended that show and it was a bit of a nightmare if I'm honest. The kids and parents did not give a t*ss and treated the everything like a playground. I think there were a few sorry exhibitors after that one.
In my experience Zenos staff go out of their way to be accessible to everyone. I've seen the car at the Autosport show with dads lifting their kids into car to take photos, and the staff were there to clean the fingerprints in an attempt to keep the car presentable. Unfortunately it's the nature of these things that one bad afternoon leaves a permanent bad impression with those present at the time.

As for the car itself, I was one of those early adopters, and I'm very pleased with my choice. Lotus left a (small) gap in the market by adding weight, cost, and electronic complexity to the Elise. Zenos have managed to build a car that's very rewarding to drive, lighter than the Elise, more civilised than the Atom. The various power options (200 to 350 bhp) are pretty well priced if you look at power to weight ratio. I don't think it's necessarily better or worse than its competitors, but it has found its own niche.
Before long we should see the E11 with doors, fixed windscreen, and a removable roof. That should expand their appeal.