The Elf Honda World Championship Endurance machine – the bike dripped of high technology and was stunning to look at. Painted a midnight blue with red and white highlights, the Elf was completely encased in an aerodynamic shell from top to bottom, front to rear. Hardly anything was exposed. Underneath it featured the unique front steering hub, a single-sided rear swingarm, and the engine was an integral part of the chassis – all groundbreaking for its time.

The Elf was low and long. Perhaps the sleekest racing motorcycle ever built.

“My first test on the bike was in Austria,” team rider David Aldana said. “Just sitting on the bike for the first time was strange. It didn’t have triple clamps. It just had a shaft coming through the top where triple clamps would normally be, with a couple of stubby handles welded to the side of this shaft. They were really narrow – designed that way to keep a slim fairing profile and to keep your hands out of the wind.

“I was apprehensive at first. It didn’t come with any instructions,” Aldana laughs. “It wasn’t very comfortable to ride. My thumbs would pinch under the handlebars when you turned it full lock. That’s how tight everything was. I pulled out of the pits and hit the brakes to make sure they worked and then I turned left and right few times to see how it handled. It didn’t dive under braking at all. It was real twitchy, almost too quick turning. But once on the track and up to speed it all came together. It had its quirks, but really it felt pretty much like a regular motorcycle once you got going.”

Behind the Elf in this photo is a conventional Kawasaki endurance machine of the era.