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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE I n the early 1990s swissauto, a Switzerland-based engine maker, developed a two-stroke, V-four en- gine that was used successfully as the power plant in World Championship side car rigs, but in 1996 French chassis maker ROC brought lubricant com- pany Elf back into Grand Prix racing. So after an eight-year absence, they decided to use the swiss- auto V-4 as the motor of the bike that was dubbed the Elf 500. It was the start of a four-year run of the swissauto motor in 500cc Grand Prix racing. In spite of going up against the giants, the compact and lightweight swissauto motor earned a number of successes including Grand Prix poles for Dutch rider Jurgen van den Goorbergh. Swissauto was founded in 1987 by Urs Wenger and Beat Kohler. One of the ideas of the com- pany was to build engines much lighter and more compact than that of the competition. With the swissauto V4 500 they succeeded. Compared to other Motorcycle Grand Prix motors of 1996 the single-crankshaft, crankcase reed valve swissauto V4 500 was extremely light. The motor, with a 108-degree cylinder angle, was 15 pounds lighter than a Yamaha YZ500 engine for example. It was five inches narrower than Honda's Grand Prix mill and four inches shorter than Yamaha's. The sound of the swissauto was distinctive. The reason was the pair of cylinders on each side fired simultaneously at 180 degrees in a similar manner to a BMW Boxer design. It gave the swissauto the rougher firing sound of a two-cylinder. The engine produced an impressive 190 bhp at the crank at 12,500 rpm. The first version of the motor was very peaky, test- ed by Swiss Grand Prix rider Adrian Bosshard and Frenchman Bernard Garcia during 1995, and was said to have had a light-switch power band, but over time swissauto mellowed the power delivery with a combination of crank weighting and electronics. The swissauto-powered Elf 500 debuted at the Malaysian Grand Prix in March of 1996. Elf 500 rider Juan Borja qualified 15th and then scored 10th in the race, a very credible debut. "After practice we had a lot of work to do," said Elf Team Manager Serge Rosset at the time. "Mainly because we were trying to improve rear wheel traction. I think that Borja's 10th place in his first race was a good result. You only have to com- pare it with the result of Cagiva when they started racing with a far bigger budget than we have." It was true—Cagiva struggled in Grand Prix racing for a half-a-decade rarely even scoring a World Championship point until hiring Didier De Radigues and Raymond Roche in 1987—and here Elf scored a top-10 result, and with it six championship points, in its debut. By the end of '96 Borja raced the Elf 500 to 14th in the final 500cc Grand Prix standings, scoring four top-10 finishes, including a season best eighth in the British Grand Prix at Donington Park. It wasn't bad at all considering the team had absolutely no data and nearly all the tracks in its first season of competition. An illustration of how important data could be came at Paul Ricard, a track where the team had tested. Borja was up to fifth in the French Grand Prix before ending in a gravel trap. Brit Chris Walker, who was brought in halfway through the season, also managed to twice score two World Champion- SWISSAUTO'S FOUR-YEAR GRAND PRIX P124