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 At
the NHRA champions’ banquet on Thursday night, officials
drew King’s number for a first-round bye for Sunday’s
run-off between winners from all seven divisions. King made
one qualifying pass on Friday, and the Jeep ran 10.68 in the
morning, then at 10 o’clock that night they gave all
another run, and it ran another .68. Another time pass was
on Saturday, and racing commenced on Sunday morning, about
10 a.m. King and the Jeep were ready.
In the final, he ran somebody from Kansas and Division 5
in an early Barracuda (he doesn’t remember the guy,
but he DOES remember that he was a nice person).”He
had me on the tree, with a .520 to my .540, and he broke out.
I hit the brakes and broke out too, but I was better than
he was, a 10.65 dial and a 10.63 run, and he was about one
number below what I went,” King remembers.
There were some people who raced in Division 2 who knew the
Jeep, but not many. One who did was the great Kyle Seipel
from northern California. “Oh yeah, I remember the car.
I remember when ‘the Fly’ had it,” he told
me later. “I do remember that when I pulled out for
the final, the army team was checking it out pretty good.
But they didn’t say anything about buying it from me,”
King said. The Pomona win money was good. King got $3,500
for showing up, plus $5,000 to win, and at the Division 2
race earlier, he had won $2,000, plus contingencies, about
$2,000 on decals alone.
On the way back, King and Phillips drove into Van Horn after
an overstay in Phoenix, Arizona, and stayed in the same place
and ate at the same Mexican restaurant. Then they drove to
Jackson, Mississippi, and came on in from there.
Now the Jeep is in Kelly’s trailer, awaiting another
race. “I went to Chris’s Footbrake Challenge in
February 2005 at Montgomery, and I got into the money every
day but didn’t win. I haven’t driven it much since
then,” he says. The Jeep was supposed to carry the number
“1” on it for 2005, but King left his same old
number on it, 208. “That’s what brought me there,”
he says.
There is one other famous car that Kelly wants, “Barefoot”
Larry McDuffie’s AMX from Georgia. He has been after
him for years to sell it, but King doesn’t think he’ll
ever get it. McDuffie’s AMX, called “Strange Stuff,”
would be a good addition to his famous car collection ---
it’s as funky as a pair of worn overalls, but as both
a Footbraker and a delay box car, it’s deadly, having
won McDuffie enough money over the years to buy a house in
the suburbs.
“It’s a different car, and it’s pretty
ugly, but he’s won a lot with that. I see him on a regular
basis, and he still doesn’t want to do anything with
it. He says no. That would be No. 4 in my collection. I don’t
know of any others that I want,” the great Kelly King
says. 
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