Zenos Cars, a new venture by former Caterham CEO Ansar Ali and COO Mark Edwards revealed its first model, the E10 sports car at Autosport International in Birmingham, England.  The track-focused, street legal open-top two-seater car is powered by a mid-mounted 2.0-liter Ford engine producing 203 PS and weights a mere 650kg, it goes from 0 to 60mph in under five seconds.

A unique aluminum extrusion ‘backbone’ chassis architecture lends itself to the Zenos name: a combination of ‘zen’ to represent purity, and ‘os’, loosely Latin for ‘vertebra’. This is the platform for the 18-panel body, aluminum rear sub frame and safety cell incorporating twin roll hoops and side-impact protection. Both integrated carbon composite monocoque seats are contructed from recycled carbon fiber with a thermoplastic core, making a lightweight and strong, yet cost-effective solution.

“In designing the car, it was a fine balance; we wanted it to look aggressive without having an outrageous attitude. We’d already communicated the engineering of the car, so people knew what underpins it, but the reaction to the design and the pricepoint from the press, industry and potential customers has been really positive,” said Ansar Ali.

Zenos has partnered with Alcon, Bilstein, Corebeau and Titan for their E10 lightweight sports car project. The car goes into production late 2014 with deliveries expected in early 2015. It will sell for £24,995 (equivalent to PhP 1,600,000).

The company is also planning two models based on the same chassis architecture, for the next five years, a Roadster, Project E11, and a GT Coupé, Project E12.