Kelly King and the Jeep

By Dale Wilson
10/17/05

hat does it mean to own a famous race car? What about owning three, and wanting another? For Kelly King, not very much. “It’s just another race car,” he answers when questioned about owning his most famous, the all-fiberglass, big-block-powered Jeep roadster once shoed by the late, great Florida “Super” and bracket racer Dave “the Fly” Edwards.

Edwards, a past NHRA Division 2 Super Gas champ who won the Gatornationals in 1986 and got runner-up to another great David, one David Rampy of Alabama in Super Comp at the Gators a few years ago, died in a Gainesville hospital a year later, just a week after suffering a crash on his sidecar-equipped motorcycle on the way to take photos of a Harley weekend fun-run at a Florida west coast attraction spot. He had already sold his famous Jeep and had gotten out of drag racing.

King, a garage door business owner from Stockbridge, Georgia, ended up with the Jeep after two other owners, first, his friends David Simmons, a past NHRA U.S. Nationals Super Gas winner, and then “Smoky Joe” Smith, a Division 2 Super Gas hitter who wanted a dragster. King and partner Chris Phillips, who runs Montgomery [Alabama] Motorsports Park, had just what Smoky Joe wanted, a ’90 Suncoast digger. Two days after Smith let it be known that the Jeep was up for a trade, they had made the deal. It came with the number “22” on the scoop, one of Joe’s “prizes” for finishing No. 2 in Super Gas points in Division 2.

The Jeep, certainly with “the Fly” Edwards, came with a pedigree. He bought it used and basically unfinished, then finished it himself, installed a big-block Chevy engine and a Powerglide and went to winnin’. Made of fiberglass and minus a top, the boxy roadster was ahead of its time in Super Gas (where today the majority of cars are streamlined roadsters), with plenty of side, front and rear view. Edwards figured once that he won more than $100,000 with it in bracket and Super Gas/Super Rod mode.

Not only was he a money winner, Edwards was an innovator as well. Once, when he won the Division 2 bracket finals at Atlanta Dragway, he did so with a car equipped with his own-design sputter box that ran 12 seconds in the quarter-mile at more than 140 mph. When I wrote about the sputtering system and the race for “National Dragster,” my wording about the box was deleted.

Often, when “the Fly” ran his 8-second dragster at DeSoto Memorial Dragway in Bradenton, people would leave their pit area just to see what kinds of new tricks he had up his sleeve --- quick launch, then a slow-down, or launch and a slow-down on the top end, or a combination of both. Once, he told me, he tried a trans brake button that activated with a gentle lift of a fingernail. “It made no difference in my reaction time,” he said.

He was an innovator. His Jeep, raced in an era of full-bodied Camaros and Chevy IIs, was proof enough.

With Edwards’ wins on the NHRA national and divisional level, plus those of Simmons and Smoky Joe, the Jeep was known far and wide, and better-known around the south. Kelly King ended up racing mostly Footbrake Eliminator in the Jeep, and he chose it because it offered an unobstructed view of competitors from the front, sides AND back. And following in Edwards’ and Smith’s footsteps, he too put the image of the Jeep within the pages of NHRA’s weekly newspaper for his big win in it at the 2004 World Finals at Pomona.

King won the Division 2 Sportsman Eliminator in his “Flying Fortress” Vega, then followed with a class win at Pomona a month later. We figure that “the Fly” might have been mighty proud to seethe California class win in the Jeep.