What It's Like Jumping From An Ultralight Track Day Weapon To A Luxury Performance Saloon

Unless you’ve been blinded by the EmojiTR, you’ll know that last Friday we hosted our second ever Nurburgring CT Meet. It was a huge success, with cool cars, brilliant drifting and awesome people making it a great way to spend a day. Naturally, since I live in London, I had to get to the track somehow, and when you’re heading to one of the most famous tracks in the world, it only makes sense to take something cool.

That’s where the Zenos E10 S comes in. It’s a superlight track-focused weapon that makes very few compromises for comfort, and rewards your hardiness by being a manic bundle of energy when the roads get fun. You can read about my adventure soon, but suffice to say that driving a car like this 1300 miles in just four days is quite an experience! Once I handed the Zenos’ keys back, it was time to jump back in our trusty Jaguar XE S, which we’ve had on a long-term test.

Both cars attempt to give their owners fun behind the wheel, but go about it in completely different ways. Here’s what I noticed after jumping between two cars at very opposite ends of the performance spectrum.

Size does matter

When it comes to driving hard, every unnecessary ounce will be working towards nullifying your experience. The Zenos E10 S makes no compromises to be as light as possible, and the result is a car that weighs just 725kg. You can notice it immediately, as the car just rockets about - Zenos claims it’ll hit 60mph in less than four seconds, and I wouldn’t argue with that - darting from corner to corner at the merest suggestion of steering input. Immediacy is the word of the day, as there’s no electrical assistance to any input, so everything happens the second you request it.

The Jaguar XE S’s primary concern is comfort, and for that you need weight. I’ve never felt like its 335bhp was anything more than brisk, but after the Zenos’s crazed acceleration it feels even more sedate. That’s not to say it isn’t fast, though. As gears mesh seamlessly together you accrue speed frightfully quickly. It’s quiet, comfortable pace, but every turn of the wheel involves working against the car’s heft, and that’s just exacerbated by jumping from what is essentially a road legal go kart!

I appreciate luxury even more now

The Zenos was never meant to be anything other than a weekend toy. A ‘second’ car for good weather and relatively short drives to your favourite roads or the local race track. It’s no surprise, then, that the luxury-focused XE S is a world apart, but it’s just how much we take these luxuries for granted that hit me.

Getting into the Zenos is an event you’ll look forward to if you save it for fun drives, but after using it as my ‘daily’ for a week the four-button startup sequence and four-point harness started to frustrate. Jumping in the Jaguar I was immediately calmed - the leather chairs, soft steering wheel, and Bluetooth connectivity were welcomed after a week of mile-munching.

The Zenos’ interior is great at what it does, gets you buzzing when you jump in a stone’s throw from the Nurburgring’s entrance barriers, and when the weather was warm it was a genuinely pleasurable place to sit. But when tiredness caught up with me as I dropped the E10 S back home, there was no car I’d rather cruise home in than the sumptuous Jaaaag.

Good seats come in all shapes and sizes

The Zenos packs lightweight bucket seats with thin padding. I was expecting my back to be ruined after a 400-mile stint from my home, but at no point during the trip there or back did I ever feel anything close to discomfort. I’ve driven some big, luxury cars that purport to cosset your bum and back, but accepted that many hours behind the wheel will pretty much always lead to aches and pains.

CT Community Manager Jake was sat beside me for the whole adventure, and he didn’t get any pains either. On the epic drive home, when we should both be feeling grumpy and ruined after a long weekend, the sun came out and left us both feeling fresh and in good spirits. Even a few hours in the spongy leather seats of the Jaguar left my back feeling a little tight. Good posture FTW!

Summary

Simply put, both cars do what they do very well. If you want to cruise long distances often with the occasional back road squirt, you could do a lot worse than get a Jaguar XE S. It could do with being a little more frenetic when you put it in its sportier mode, but it gets the job done. On the other hand, you can option heated seats in the Zenos, and we would have killed for some heaters when temperatures dropped below zero, but if you want luxury you’re going to compromise the on track bit, and when I was pounding around the Green Hell I forgot all about my chilly fingers and just became engrossed in the experience.

I drive a lot of cool, varied stuff in this job, but it’s not often I get to drive such polar opposites back-to-back. It was an intriguing experience, and helped to put each car’s idiosyncrasies into perspective. If variety is the spice of life, these two made my week very spicy indeed.