History of the World Challenge Series

From World Challenge website....

"In 1972, the Sports Car Club of America formed a new club racing class for absolutely stock street automobiles. The class was called "showroom stock," and the original rules imposed a price ceiling on the cars of $3,000-pennies in comparison to today's racing budgets. From those humble origins, showroom stock racing grew in popularity over time, manufacturer interest, cost and number of participants.

On the first day of summer, 1980, a 24-hour showroom stock race was staged at Nelson Ledges Road Course near Youngstown, Ohio. The success of the Nelson Ledges "Longest Day" and the amazing response to a second such event at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in August, 1984, prompted the SCCA to combine several existing endurance races into a manufacturers' series for 1984.

This new series was expanded into a six-race professional showroom stock endurance racing series for 1985. The 1985 series was billed as the Playboy United States Endurance Cup, with Playboy Magazine its title sponsor. There were four classes in 1985 (GT, A, B and C) with a per-race purse of $20,000 and year-end bonus of $60,000.

A number of changes were made in 1986, as Escort replaced Playboy as the sponsor and the class structure was altered. A new class was introduced-Super Sports (SS) and the B and C classes were combined. The per-race purses jumped to $28,000 and the year-end points fund was increased to $80,000-split among the four classes. Once again, six races were held, including two 24-hour events.

The series continued to grow in 1987, as the number of races jumped to eight and the per-race purse was upped to $36,000. The class structure remained intact and Escort was retained as the series' title sponsor.

In 1988 and 1989, the SS class was eliminated, thus making the GT cars the premier class with the A and B classes remaining unchanged.

A dramatic off-season followed the 1989 Escort Endurance Championship, in which the series was completely restructured and renamed. For 1990, World Challenge® was born.

The new series featured cars homologated by manufacturers. The rules were along the same lines as the European Group A specifications, rather than the showroom stock configuration of the series from 1985 through 1989.

The 1990 Escort World Challenge featured two classes of competition following the restructuring. The top class, World Challenge, showcased high-performance sports cars like the Chevrolet Corvette and Lotus Esprit Turbo.

The second class, Super Production, was for lower-horsepower sports cars including the Honda CRX, Eagle Talon and new Mazda Miata."

More detail on overall series history HERE