that one on ebay is a minter and for that price if i had the money i would seriously look at it. here in new zealand the frame and fork were $4500 new zealand dollars back in '96...but if you wait long enough like a year the shop got sick of it hanging round and chucked it out the door for half price
then got into an argument with the importer for doing that!!
how does it ride...so hard to describe as its so different, you do have to remember its sole purpose in life was their DH frame. As a straight DH bike they sucked 120mm rear travel and designed for a max of 80mm front travel fork, next year they had the pipeline freeride bike and i think thats also when the element DH came along.
It is a truly fully active rear end, doesn't matter what you do its always doing its thing, traction in spades. rider would normally run out of puff or make some kind or error before it ran out of grip. lovely on single track and windy forest trails not so hot on high speed flat out straight stuff. the XS speed had its shock located for active all the time so it doesn't matter how you have the shock set it is always fully active in a DH kind of way.
URT vs anything else...can't say i have noticed any real difference between suspension systems from that era, you can feel the crank move if you hit something hard enough though. Being a designed DH frame (and where they located the shock) you have to pedal like a track rider real smooth, and pedal round not square.
Sorry i can't really describe how it rides....its something you have to own to learn how to ride it, but it is the funnest bike i have ever owned and is my favourite. prefer it over my raven 2 by a long margin. if your thinking of getting that one on ebay, I would and then put some older xt and race face parts on it...SWEET. but ditch the flat bars, always felt like it was going to chuck you over the front end going downhill with them no matter what rise stem i had, changed to risers and sweet as...very strange