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Wikipedia: Champ Car
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Champ Car page on 4 July 2018, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Champ Car is the general name for a class and specification of American professional top-level open wheel cars used in American open-wheel car racing for many decades, associated primarily with the Indianapolis 500. Such racing had been sanctioned by the AAA, USAC, SCCA, the CRL, CART, and IndyCar.
In its most popular and recent contemporary usage, "Champ Car" was the name given to a governing body formerly known as Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). The CART series was founded in 1979 by team owners who disagreed with the direction and leadership of USAC. At the height of the popularity of the series in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was known as the CART/PPG Indy Car World Series. The term "Champ Car" temporarily disappeared from use, with the more marketable term "Indy Car" being utilized.
In 1996, the open wheel "split" saw the CART series take a different direction from the newly created Indy Racing League IRL and the Indy 500. Thereafter, it re-branded itself as CART again, and re-booted the term "Champ Car" as the moniker for the machines used. The series was advertised as CART FedEx Championship Series from 1997 to 2002.
CART went bankrupt at the end of the 2003 season. A trio of CART team owners acquired the assets of the sanctioning body (forming what was known legally as Open Wheel Racing Series, Inc.) and renamed it as the Champ Car World Series (CCWS), again highlighting the historic 'Champ Car' term. Continuing financial difficulties caused CCWS to file for bankruptcy before its planned 2008 season; its assets were merged into the IRL's IndyCar Series, reuniting both series of American open-wheel racing.