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Zenos is back with the E10, and it starts at £115,900
The British lightweight maker has returned from administration with a 790kg E10 range from £115,900. What the numbers say about building sports cars 50 at a time.
Zenos went into administration in 2017 having built a small number of very light sports cars, and the reasonable assumption since then has been that the business model went with it. On 14 October the company showed the 2027 E10 in production form: two models, a carbon fibre body, no roof, and a price that starts at £115,900.
The r2 costs £115,900 and the rZ costs £129,900, both listed on Zenos's own site alongside a delivery date of the second quarter of 2027. The company says it will deliver just 50 cars in the first full year of production. That is the shape of the whole enterprise in one number, and it explains most of what follows.
What 790kg buys
Both cars weigh 790kg. The r2 uses a turbocharged 2.3-litre four-cylinder engine making 300bhp at 6,000rpm and 313lb ft, which Zenos puts at 380bhp per tonne, with 0-62mph in 3.8 seconds and a 150mph top speed. The rZ uses a smaller 1,969cc unit, takes power to 380bhp and 376lb ft, and claims 480bhp per tonne, 3.2 seconds and the same 150mph.
The architecture is the original idea, revised rather than replaced. A single extruded aluminium spine carries a carbon fibre tub and full carbon fibre body panels, with pushrod front suspension and inboard-mounted dampers, coilovers at the rear, a six-speed manual gearbox and a limited slip differential. For this generation Zenos has widened the front and rear tracks, lowered the centre of gravity slightly, and fitted larger brake rotors with four-piston callipers and a new master cylinder.
Inside there is a new dashboard with a latest-generation driver display, weatherproof switchgear so the cabin can survive without a roof, and in-house carbon fibre seats. Buyers choose between a race wind deflector panel and an optional full windscreen with wipers. Body panels can be painted or left in visible carbon weave, and the colour list runs to six metallics plus a bespoke option.
The price against the car it replaces
Top Gear's report on the relaunch notes that the design the new E10 is built on cost around £45,000 back in 2017. On that comparison the r2 asks about two and a half times as much and the rZ close to three times.
Some of the gap is hardware. The 2027 car has two new engine installations with CAN bus control, revised induction and chargecooling, bigger brakes, a reworked cabin and a wider track. Carbon body panels, a limited slip differential and a six-speed manual do not get cheaper at 50 cars a year.
Top Gear pitched the r2's price against a Porsche 911 Carrera T and the rZ against an Alpine A110 R 70, which is the honest way to read the number. This is not a cheap track car that happens to be road legal. It is a low-volume alternative to a six-figure sports car, and the case for it rests on weight rather than power.
Who is left building cars like this
The money moving through British specialist manufacturing at the moment is going to programmes with a different shape. McLaren has committed about £500m to a new UK factory, an expanded composites operation and its first SUV, which we set out in our piece on the two factory bets announced the same day. A £115,900 roadster delivered 50 at a time is the opposite kind of bet: small, hand-finished, and dependent on buyers who want the thing the industry has largely stopped making.
Zenos makes that argument itself. "With a raft of enhancements across the car, the 2027 Zenos E10 range provides high-performance and advanced engineering at a time when new, pure bred sports cars are increasingly rare," the company said in its launch release. The same release calls the two cars "unashamedly petrol powered" and points at the power-to-weight ratio as the answer to "today's bloated and numb new cars".
That is marketing, and it also happens to be the product brief. A car that weighs 790kg with 300bhp in it does something a heavy electric crossover cannot, whatever the straight-line numbers say.
The practical bits, and the catches
The ordering arrangements are unusual enough to read carefully. The range can be reserved now, and a UK car can be delivered either road registered or track only. Overseas customers are offered the car as a track-only machine, in right-hand or left-hand drive. Production is in the UK, and Zenos describes the carbon components as hand-laid. Autocar has driven the rZ and PistonHeads the r2, according to the company's own press page.
Then there is the no-roof question. The E10 does not come with one, and the weatherproof switchgear exists precisely because the cabin gets wet. The windscreen and wipers are an option rather than part of the car. Anyone picturing a weekend tourer should picture a helmet instead.
What the return actually tells us
A company coming back from administration with the same concept and a much higher price is not a straightforward good news story, and it does not need to be read as one. The interesting part is what the price says about the cost base underneath it. Carbon fibre, a bespoke aluminium extrusion, a manual gearbox and a hand-built engine installation are all expensive at any volume, and at 50 cars a year they are close to unaffordable. Top Gear's own conclusion, after allowing for a decade of inflation, was that a hundred and fifteen thousand is still a lot of money for this car. That is the trade Zenos is asking buyers to make, and the 790kg kerb weight is the whole of the argument for it.
There is a market for that, and it is not the market that bought the 2017 car. The buyers Zenos is now chasing are the ones comparing a lightweight British roadster against a Porsche or an Alpine, and the pitch is that 790kg is worth paying for.
Whether 50 of those buyers exist each year is the only question that matters, and the order book is the only place the answer will show up. The first deliveries are due in the second quarter of 2027.