Reynard Motorsport was at one time the world's largest racecar manufacturer. Initially based at Bicester and latterly at Reynard Park, Brackley, England the company built successful cars in virtually every category they pursued, and had a reputation for being able to win upon debut of their latest chassis’.

The 2000 CART FedEx Champ Car season saw the Cal Wells III-owned PPI Motorsports team accumulate 172 total points in the championship; by far the best tally for the team in the six years it had been competing at this level since Wells established a partnership with longtime entrant Frank Arciero. Toyota had stepped up to the plate with a substantially improved RV8E engine and the Precision Preparation, Inc. team was suddenly finding itself in contention for race wins and strong finishes.

Driver Cristiano da Matta would win his first race in Champ (Indy) Cars at Chicago in 2000 and would go on to finish 10th in the championship standings with nine appearances in the top ten from 20 races. Teammate Oriol Servia was a “rookie” following his 1999 Indy Lights championship and would finish 15th in the season standings with a best finish of 3rd at the Detroit round. da Matta used this season to establish himself as a “hot commodity” that would go on to win the Champ Car title for the powerhouse Newman-Haas team in 2002 and follow that up as a Toyota Formula 1 team driver in 2003. Toyota would get their first Champ (Indy) Car win in 2000 with Juan Pablo Montoya winning at Milwaukee for Ganassi Racing.

The 2000 Reynard 2KI being offered has its chassis tag that shows that this car was built in February 2000, was delivered to PPI originally and is chassis #033. The Reynard is painted in the colors used throughout the season by da Matta and PPI with Pioneer, MCI Worldcom and Toyota as the primary backers. Servia would run the year in the yellow Telefonica colors.

We do not have access to CART records that could definitively tell the story of this racecar, but Reynard 2KI-033 has CART Registered Chassis #0537, strongly indicating that this was a race chassis that competed during the 2000 season. The car has primarily carbon fiber construction for its monocoque and body components and in looking at photos you can see elements intact, such as the driver’s seat, Momo steering wheel, Willians five-point safety harness, wings and associated aero bits, half-shafts, original-style wheels, Firestone Firehawk slicks, various swaybar adjusters and suspension components. The engine, which is a stressed member on these cars, is reported as a Toyota “dummy” while you can also see the intricate casting that joins the back of the block to the gearbox and the engine plenum.

At the time that this type of Reynard Champ (Indy) Car ran at the highest level of open-wheel American motorsport, they would average nearly 230-mph in qualifying at Michigan International Speedway, their fastest track.