Elfe
automobile manufacturer
The Elfe was a French automobile, manufactured in Lavallois, Paris, from 1919 until about 1925 by Ateliers Defrance Freres. The company was founded by M. Eugene Mauve, who was also the instigator of the Bol d'Or race for cyclecars and latterly motorcycles, now held at the Le Mans circuit in France. During its brief life, the company entered numerous races, under various names including ELFE, Elfe-Anzani, Elfe-DeFrance and Mauve.
Types
The cars produced can be divided into four broad categories:
The prototype monocar. Exhibited at the 1919 Paris Salon, this was an attractive single seater, finished in burnished aluminium and mahogany. A two-cylinder engine powered the rear wheels via a motorcycle gearbox and belt final drive.
The two-seater racing car/monocar First seen in the 1921 Paris-Nice trial, this unconventional design utilised a U-section chassis of timber and steel construction with rear-mounted, air-cooled Anzani vee-twin engine. No gearbox or clutch were fitted, requiring the passenger to push-start and leap aboard. The passenger has no backrest, save for the exhaust pipe and must place his feet on pegs outboard of the chassis, or must alternatively ride "backwards". At least two racing cars were made, as evidenced by contemporary team photographs.
“Elfe” enters the record as automobile manufacturer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Elfe, automobile and manufacturer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1328436. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1925 and 1921.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elfe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.