Zenos burst onto the scene in 2013 as a more modern rival to track car specialist Caterham. However, the company on Wednesday confirmed it has entered administration, a process similar to bankruptcy protection, due to a number of canceled orders for its sole product, the E10 track car.
“It is with great disappointment that the board has had to take this step,” Zenos boss and co-founder Mark Edwards said in a statement. “We still believe that our products offer unrivalled affordable fun and we have already made very good progress in developing the next product in our strategy.”
Zenos was founded in 2012 by Edwards together with Ansar Ali, both of them former Lotus and Caterham executives. Ali joined McLaren in 2015 and is currently in charge of the personalization and motorsport departments for the McLaren Automotive road car business.
Zenos had managed to sell its 100th car in September 2016 and had a number of orders to keep it busy in 2017. A few of the cars even ended up in the United States, priced from $39,500. However, a spate of canceled orders in late 2016 resulted in a “shortfall in funding” that forced the company to enter administration in January 2017.
The company is hopeful of finding a potential buyer and has on the drawing board designs of two more models, the E11 and E12. The E11 is to be a convertible version of the E10 with a soft-top roof, while the E12 is to be an enclosed version.
