Zenos E10 S vs. Caterham Seven 360 R

The driving position is good. It’s low and straight, although you’re sited quite low relative to the gearlever. Truth be told, that’s fine. If it were a sequential ’box in a race car, that’s where they’d put it. It’s just unusual to find an H-pattern ’box there.

Meanwhile, fit and finish are okay but no more. Zenos has built this car to a price where it thinks there’s a market, remember. The base price is £24,995, for a 200bhp version. The E10 S tested here brings with it, among other things, an additional 50bhp, for £5000, and other options, and on-the-road costs take the total of this car to £36,135.

More, but not disastrously so. Caterham is no stranger to an options list, either. The Caterham 360R is the mid-point of Caterham’s recently revised line-up. It has a 2.0-litre engine, again from Ford, but a Duratec naturally aspirated unit making 180bhp.

Caterham’s opening gambit suggests that it’s an appealing £23,995, but if you want the factory to build the car for you, it’ll cost another £3000. The R pack adds £3995 and includes wide-track sports suspension, a limited-slip 
differential and a lightened flywheel.

Another £200 gets you smaller but more desirable 13in wheels and, all in – including paint, a heater, shift lights and so on – you’re looking at a £36,335 Caterham. For my money, though, this is just about the perfect Caterham specification. And, as with an Ariel Atom and a few other specialist cars, depreciation on a Seven – and probably the Zenos – makes ownership more affordable than you might think.

We’re at Bruntingthorpe, in Leicestershire, which is an old airbase turned automotive proving ground and aircraft graveyard. We won’t be needing the whole runway, because that’s good for 220mph in a Bugatti Veyron, but later we’ll use a short circuit that cuts through halfway along the big straight. It 
has a decent mix of corners and a pretty poor surface that, like the surrounding roads, is particularly good value for assessing the chassis of cars like these.

The Zenos first, then, and even as you nose out of Bruntingthorpe’s main gates and onto the nearest B-road, the mechanical layout of this car is quite clear. The front end is relatively lightly loaded and the steering, at a touch over two turns lock to lock, has a precise, positive response. It’s not as free from kickback or as pure in its messages as an Elise’s rim, but it’s good.

The ride is firm, well controlled and just about supple enough to avoid being crashy, and the E10 S’s general demeanour isn’t unlike – and I mean this as a compliment – that other mid-engined car from Norfolk.

There are obvious differences. The E10 feels more open, and although throttle response is good for a turbo unit, meaning that it doesn’t feel overtly blown, the noise is all whizzes and fizzes. If you’re not wearing a helmet, wear earplugs.

Niggles? There are a few. The brakes require absurd efforts to get the Zenos slowed, although that’s not such a bad thing on a circuit. The gearshift is no better than when it left a Ford Focus, and the E10 is wide in this company, at 1870mm, because it can’t be packaged any smaller.

What that does mean, however, is that it’s rather roomier than the Seven. Those who are tall and wide will be able to get comfortable, even alongside somebody else tall and wide. All in, the Zenos is enjoyable at any speed – essential in a road car.

But so is a Seven, for all the usual reasons. It’s so light and compact and keen that you simply know not to expect a supple, mature ride on the road. The steering is sharper than the E10’s and the whole car is more alive and alert.

That isn’t surprising. Caterham quotes a dry weight of 560kg for the 360R and Zenos 700kg for the E10 S, so the Seven is a daintier thread down back roads. Its throttle response and noise are out of the old school of British sports cars, too, while its five-speed Mazda MX-5 gearbox’s shift is out of the Japanese school of sports cars, and all the better for that. According to the bald figures, the Zenos is faster – at 4.0sec to 60mph versus 4.8sec. But keep the Seven wound nearer the redline and there’s nothing in it.

A Caterham isn’t without its niggles, though. Finding room in the footwell is a drag, and space in the rest of the cabin is at an equal premium. If you want to feel open – and move your right arm around a bit – you’ll want the doors off, but then you’ll be battered mercilessly by the breeze. You can have full weather gear, though. You’ll still get the odd drip inside in a downpour, but you’ll stay a darned sight drier than in the roofless Zenos. And sit in a more pleasingly finished interior.

Contemporary hardware has dictated these cars’ respective mechanical layouts and sizes. But because Lotus founder Colin Chapman created the Seven to win in motorsport and Zenos has no motorsport ambitions, the E10 has been allowed greater habitability than a Seven can ever have.

Read the full Caterham Seven review

That doesn’t mean the Zenos is a stranger to a circuit. This E10 S has an open rear differential, but a limited-slip differential is an option, as are track springs and dampers. I tried the E10 on the circuit with both the road-tuned suspension and, more extensively, the track set-up. The uprated springs and dampers add another £795 but can be swapped for the road ones in under half an hour.

On either, it’s good. The track set-up gives, as you’d expect, less movement and tighter body control. You’d want it if you were on circuits a lot, but in either form the handling balance is sweet. There’s some initial understeer, which is as it should be, and from then you’ve a few options.

Lift and wait, or trail the brakes into the turn, and the E10’s rear will break away to help the cornering line, too. Get back on the gas there and the E10 will slide a little but, eventually, you’ll smell rubber from the rear inside tyre – especially with road dampers – telling you that it’s spinning up a touch, and then it’ll go neutral.

The good thing, though, is that there are no nasty surprises. This is a short, wide car with an engine mounted in the middle and relatively high. It could have been snappy and nervous but isn’t. In fact, it’s supremely well sorted.