“Actually, I have three famous cars. I have Woodrow Brackett’s old “Bad News Travels Fast” Vega wagon, and I also have the Vega that used to be Chris Phillips’, called the “Flying Fortress,” King says. Readers in the northeast or midwest or the California area probably haven’t heard of any of these cars, but plenty in the Southland have. Between the three, King figures the “Bad News Travels Fast” ’77 Vega probably won a quarter-million dollars, with Brackett doing the wheeling. “Someone once told me that Woodrow used to keep a cash register in the trunk, it won so much money,” King said with a laugh. Once, Woodrow won so many races at one Carolina track that management asked him not to return for awhile. The wagon is a joint venture between he and Phillips. King won several $5,000 races in it, plus the 2005 Super Chevy race at Atlanta.

And before Phillips took over Montgomery Motorsports Park, he won a fair share of bracket races in his “Flying Fortress” Vega, so-named because it held a big-block Chevy engine under the hood and despite weighing a bunch, wheelstood off the starting line on every pass it made. King now owns the “Fortress” outright.

That was the car in which Kelly won the 2004 Division 2 Footbrake crown. “I like footbraking better. At one time, it was easier to win, but now it’s getting about as hard to win in Footbrake as it is in Super Pro,” he says. “But I’m a better footbrake racer.” Total wins for him: probably over a hundred in both classes, with at least 50 wins in Footbrake.

King, now 38, started racing at age 19, on the street, and later, when he woke up and realized that, No. 1, street racing was dangerous, and No. 2, there was much more money to be made bracket racing, he began going to the old Atlanta Speed Shop Drag Strip in Covington, Georgia. “I’ve always liked fast cars. I started street racing, and I always had some kind of muscle car. I won my first race on the street in 1985, in a ’68 GTO. But I wanted to see what my car would run, time-wise,” he said. So he bought a ’62 Chevy II. He also raced wife Dawn’s Camaro, a completely stock car, and won in it a few times, plus more in the GTO and the Chevy II. Then in 1988, a friend had a Vega and he bought it, and friend Toby Barnes, the first runner-up at the Million Dollar Drag Race, and King both drove it. Barnes once won a Z-93 Radio race, the first one, at Atlanta Dragway, and that gave the pair a free trip to California and the World Finals.

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King would return to the NHRA World Finals again, this time racing his own deal.

In 2004, his “Fortress” Vega wasn’t running, so King raced the Jeep until April, when the Vega returned. He ended up winning the Division 2 Footbrake crown at Atlanta Dragway. “After I won the first round against a guy from Mobile, then the third round against another guy from Mobile, Toby said, ‘You’re single-handedly going to take out all of Mobile Dragway.’ And that’s what I did. My trees weren’t very good, but I was driving the finish line great,” King says. He beat yet another Mobilian in the final.

About a month later, Chris Phillips and he went to California for the World Finals bracket championships. They had to be there on November 15, a Wednesday, for tech. “Chris put on a big race at Montgomery, and we left that Sunday night. I took the Jeep because I hadn’t raced the ‘Flying Fortress’ in the quarter, and I didn’t know what it would do with a big 454 in it. I was about the same in either one, so I said, ‘We’ll take the Jeep.’” It turned out to be a good move.

You won’t believe what they went out there with --- Phillips’ funky-green ’72 GMC pickup and an open trailer. The first day, the pair drove to west Texas, 20 hours straight, stopping at Van Horn, Texas, a small town with an authentic Mexican restaurant near their motel, then up at dawn and a drive to the California state line. “We got there and we were worried about the trailer and the truck not passing state inspection, but when we got there, the station wasn’t even open. We blew through and stayed at the first little town for the night. We drove into Pomona the next morning,” King remembers.