Why the ground effect has such a different outcome for wings and cars? I have some confusion concerning the ground effect.
If we take two applications: Aircraft and Cars, they seem to have completely opposite effects.
Aircraft
From Ground effect (aerodynamics), we can read:

During normal flight, the upper wing surface experiences reduced static air pressure and the lower surface comparatively higher static air pressure. Flying close to a surface increases air pressure on the lower wing surface, nicknamed the &quot;ram&quot; or &quot;cushion&quot; effect, and thereby improves the aircraft lift-to-drag ratio. The lower/nearer the wing is vs. the ground, the more pronounced the ground effect becomes.

I can understand this, the air gets 'trapped' between the wing and the surface (and as consequence the pressure on the underside of the wing goes up)
Cars
However, from Ground effect (cars) we read:

Designers shifted their efforts at understanding air flow around the perimeter, body skirts, and undersides of the vehicle to increase downforce with less drag than compared to using a wing.
This kind of ground effect is easily illustrated by taking a tarpaulin out on a windy day and holding it close to the ground: it can be observed that when close enough to the ground the tarp will be drawn towards the ground. This is due to Bernoulli's principle; as the tarp gets closer to the ground, the cross sectional area available for the air passing between it and the ground shrinks. This causes the air to accelerate and as a result pressure under the tarp drops while the pressure on top is unaffected, and together this results in a net downward force. The same principles apply to cars.

The cross sectional area decreases, causing a higher velocity. This higher velocity decreases the pressure, causing the tarpualin to go down.
This confuses me, as it seems that the same situation (a plate in the vicinity of a surface) causes two completely opposite effects.
Both the &quot;trapping air -&gt; pressure goes up&quot;  as well as &quot;trapping air -&gt; velocity goes up -&gt; pressure goes down&quot; explanation seem reasonable to me.
This made me wonder:
Why the ground effect has such a different outcome for wings and cars?
If I have a plate under an angle close to the ground, will the air be trapped, creating an air cushion pushing the plate up, or will the air accelerate, causing the plate to be pushed down? Does it have to do with some degree of area decreasing?
It actually has exactly the same outcome! Well, in reverse.

Wings generate lift by forcing air down (one way or another, let's not go into details). When the wings are close to the ground, the air that is forced down can't get out of the way, resulting in a higher pressure.

Cars generate downforce by forcing air up. When air close to the ground is forced up, it can't be replaced by 'new' air easily. This results in a low pressure, sucking the car down.

The ground effect is thus exactly the same in either case: air that is either pushed out or pulled in, cannot be replenished quickly enough due to the ground being in the way. The difference in outcome is because a wing is attached at a positive angle w.r.t the ground, whereas a car is shaped like a very thick wing at a negative angle.

A comparison could be a hovercraft on the one hand, which is lifted off the ground almost exclusively by ground effect (if you were to drop a hovercraft from a plane, it wouldn't matter much whether it was powered up or not). On the other hand, a vacuum cleaner, which is sucked down to the floor exclusively by ground effect (indeed, Feynman's sprinkler experiment will tell you it is not sucked down because of the upwards acceleration of air - only the 'engine' part of your vacuum is forced down by momentum exchange. Test this by holding the vacuum in the air - you won't feel it 'pull' at all).