The nearly 75 years of drag-racing folklore includes countless tales laced with bluster, bravado and bawdiness. And because they’ve been repeated through the years, it’s difficult to say if half of it — maybe any of it — is true.
But for sure, Connie “The Bounty Hunter” Kalitta, who raced from the 1950s to the ’90s and now at age 86 presides over his multi-car NHRA team, is at the center of much of it.
Are the stories appropriate to print? Some of them are; some of them aren’t.
Kalitta’s late son, two-time Top Fuel champion Scott Kalitta, once promised, with a devilishly delicious smile on his face, “Oh, I’ve got lots of stories about my old man,” hinting that his were in the latter category.
What’s verified is that the 1992 inductee into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America was named one of the NHRA’s top 50 drivers (No. 21) in 2001. And he capped his collaborative-turned-contentious association with legend Shirley Muldowney with Beau Bridges playing his role in Muldowney’s 1983 biographical film “Heart Like A Wheel.”
Long before that, Kalitta became known as The Bounty Hunter. The clever nickname originated from his Wild West practice of painting a “Wanted” list of drivers he planned to defeat below the roll cage on his 1962 Top Gas dragster, and then crossing off each name as he put another notch in his piston, er, pistol.
Rival “Big Daddy” Don Garlits has said how that irked him. Nevertheless, Garlits displayed the 1967 version of it at his museum in Ocala, Fla.
Kalitta’s swashbuckling style is part of what makes it difficult to separate his racing persona from his business reputation, as his two investments are woven together. Perhaps his defining moment as a steely tough-guy came in October 1989, when a man brandishing a butcher knife barged into Kalitta’s air-freight headquarters in Ypsilanti, Mich., forcing a female dispatch clerk to the floor and demanding a Learjet to take him on a mission to the White House.
Kalitta intervened and agreed to fly the man to Washington, D.C. — but his plan was to depressurize the plane at altitude, neutralizing the thug unconscious.
THIS ARTICLE IS ACCESSIBLE TO INSIDERS ONLY…
SPEED SPORT Insider is the ad-free premium extension of SPEEDSPORT.com. Insider is dedicated to the best and brightest in motorsports journalism – created by the best writers, photographers and reporters in the business. From veteran Hall of Fame writers like Bones Bourcier, Dave Argabright, Pat Sullivan, Keith Waltz, Ralph Sheheen and Editor in Chief Mike Kerchner, to behind the scenes SPEED SPORT reporters like Grace Woelbing, David Hoffman and more.
By subscribing to Insider, you not only get exclusive access to this premium content, but you support the journalists that are vital to telling the stories that matter most. Subscriptions are just $5/mo or $44.95 for an entire year. View plans and details.
SPECIAL OFFER! Subscribe now with this link and save $5.00!
