Rumours of Zenos into administration..
Discussion
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.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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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. 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.
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?
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.
Hopefully some sort of buyout takes place.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff