My buddy and I were talking about the history of open wheel cars and got to thinking, which came first? I think it was the midget but after that was it the sprint or the champ car? If it was in fact the midget, how did they come up with the name midget? What were they comparing it too? A Studabaker lol

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The first Indy 500 in 1911 was won in an open wheel car. And I think other open wheel race cars preceeds that car by a few years, probably in the late 1890's.

For many years, most race cars were more or less the same. They ran shorter wheelbases on the 1/2 mile tracks than they did on the mile tracks, but otherwise, they weren't much different.

Midgets were invented during the depression, in California, to have a car to race on the 1/4 mile motorcycle tracks. They were called midgets because they were smaller than the "standard" cars, which soon became known as "big cars". Sometime after WWII, the term "Sprint Car" replaced "Big Car". I've never heard anyone claim to know who invented that term; even Chris Economaki said he didn't know.

Midgets were, for a while, the most popular sport in the country. Right after WWII, there were a number of tracks that drew 10s of thousands to midget races. The fact that many midget tracks were in cities helped.

So it sounds like sprints did come before midgets. Did the champ car come after the sprint but before the midget?

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avast maties the indy cars been open wheel from the bloody beginning of time

They were championship cars before Indy cars. Indy didn't race it's first race until 1909. The champ cars were running fairgrounds dirt miles before then. The AAA had there first championship season in 1905.

So if I'm understanding this right the Champ cars came first, then the sprints, then the midgets. If that's correct then the sprints would've been smaller than a Champ car and midgets weren't invented yet so they had to have got the name "big car" after the invention of the midget. So what did they call a "big car" or sprint car before the midget came along? Was it just considered a smaller Champ car at the time and eventually the sprint became its own class? Thanks for the replies. I've been curious of this for awhile and couldn't come up with an answer.

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And, "tin tops" were very few and far between, if any, so you might just as well say, racing began as "open wheel", even in the earliest days of just seeing who could climb the hill the fastest, which is still going on today, another one of those "best kept secrets", and it happens right here in Indiana! Bob

I think, if you go back and read old newspaper reports, they were all "racing cars" through the 1920s. The Indy Cars were also run on the miles. The cars run on shorter tracks were much the same; they just shortened the wheelbase. I think the term "Champ Cars" is post-WWII.

The term "midgets" was actually coined by a newspaper out in California, they held exhibition races of smaller versions of the "Big Cars" they were refered to a midget cars. This was in the 1912-1914 era. They were little replica's of the Stutz. There is actully footage of this in one of Max Sennett's films called "Kid Races at Venice" featuring Charlie Chaplin in one of his first films.

These cars competed as a prelim before the Vanderbilt Cup races in Santa Monica, Culver City,Venice and Ascot Park.

After this they went on tour in the midwest fair circuit.

Midget racing was organized in 1934 in California.