Onto another plane: the Richard Petty of speedboat racing tries to prove he is still a winner after losing the company his reputation built.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: COVER STORY - Cover story

As his black Chrysler rolls out of Little Washington across the bridge over the Pamlico River, Reggie Fountain chatters like a jackhammer into his cellphone. "Yeah, yeah. Not a problem. I'll bring you $500 so you can have a little something to work with." Steering with his forearm as he scrolls up another number, the sleeve of his "RMF"-monogrammed white shirt rides up, flashing a diamond-studded Rolex.

"Used to have secretaries," he tells his passenger. "A chief financial officer. Had 450 people working for me. Did almost $80 million in sales in 2006." He's still talking and juggling the phone as he wheels into a two-bay boat shop in Chocowinity, a tiny town of 800 where boats are as common as cars. "Kenny!" he greets a man with a white goatee and an English accent. "First tilings first." Pulling out his wallet, he peels off bills--"one hundred, two hundred ..." Kenny Adams, 77, shows him the modifications he's making to a dagger-shaped speed-boat. "We built this one in '99," Fountain says. "One like it would be $600,000 now." A customer is paying $50,000 for upgrades, including faster engines and a new interior.

Back in his car, Fountain takes a call from his office manager in Greenville, 25 miles inland, where he owns a shopping center and 315 apartment units. "Take the credit card and go to Lowe's and get what you need." Another caller reports his truck has broken down, and Fountain scolds him for missing an appointment. "I don't want to have to be keeping up with little deals like that." He hangs up, muttering.

Once, secretaries took care of Fountain's little deals, while CFOs handled his big ones. Over the course of 30 years, he ran a business that, by his estimate, built 10,000 speedboats that were sold for more than $1 billion. His customers were playboys and sheiks, the rich and famous. George H.W. Bush bought four; Fountain still wears cuff links bearing the presidential shield Bush gave him. Before building boats, he raced them at speeds that turned water hard as concrete. After one accident, "I woke up in the hospital, peeing blood for two weeks. Tore my kidneys all to pieces." He won seven national and three world championships in unlimited-horsepower classes. He never gave up racing entirely. On the broad Pamlico in 2004, he hit a record 177 mph in a 42-foot, 3,000-horsepower offshore racer he designed. "Reggie was known on a world scale for his prowess on the racecourse," says William Sisson, editor in chief of Soundings Trade Only, an authoritative Essex, Conn.-based magazine for the boating industry. "He was always a hard-charger, very aggressive."

"I was always at the top of the food chain," Fountain says. The Richard Petty of speedboat racing, he's 71, wears pinstriped, three-piece suits some days, racing jumpsuits on others and, every day, his signature gold necklace. "Lightning bolts in a circle." Once, it was his corporate logo. "Wear it all the time." Elbows on the steering wheel, he pushes aside his tie to unbutton his shirt.

Once, he was at the top. But on Aug. 24, 2009, Fountain Powerboat Industries Inc. and its subsidiaries, Fountain Powerboats, Baja by Fountain and Fountain Factory Superstore, filed bankruptcy. Not him personally. As president and CEO of the publicly traded company, he was legally an employee, though he owned 51 % of the stock, he says. "I was the biggest owner and the biggest loser." On the surface, the rotten economy, fractured high finance and a bank on the brink were to blame. But part of the problem, he admits, was a larger-than-life character, weaned on success, who couldn't back away from the trough. "Pigs get fat," he says with a shrug, "hogs get slaughtered."

On the outskirts of Washington, he bumps the big sedan across a field and parks several hundred yards from the 66 acres surrounding Fountain Powerboat Industries' 237,000-square-foot complex. "Grass needs mowing," he says. After the bankruptcy, he went on the new owners' payroll in his old job at $5,000 a week. But the arrangement quickly ran aground, leaving in its wake recriminations and bitterness. Did Boca Raton, Fla.-based Liberty Associates LC scoop up the company for a song, then renege on promises to pump money into rebuilding it? That's what he says...