10. Dave drives fast. The 53-year-old talk show host, who recently survived quintuple bypass surgery, lives in Connecticut and drives himself to work at the Ed Sullivan Theater every day in Manhattan. This may not be a good thing: Letterman is notorious for speeding on the Merritt Parkway or the Connecticut State Freeway. And he has the speeding tickets to prove it!

9. Dave likes fast cars. Letterman’s shiny red Viper sometimes makes it on to the show, especially when he’s tailing Hello Deli owner Rupert Jee. Letterman likes to give Jee instructions on how to behave badly in public from a microphone in the safety of his car, then speed away fast whenever anybody gets wise, leaving Jee to fend for himself on the streets of New York. Nice!

8. Dave likes even faster cars. Letterman, who grew up in Indianapolis, is part owner of Team Rahal, an auto racing team led by 1986 Indianapolis 500 champion Bobby Rahal. On those rare moments when he takes time off from his show, he can often be found in the pits or the stands, cheering on his team.

7. Dave likes fast drivers. Letterman often features racing champions on his show, including Rahal, Mario Andretti, former Indy 500 and Formula One champ Jacques Villeneuve and movie speedster Paul Newman.

6. Dave likes to test the speed limit. He once asked one youngster, “How fast do you think I can go on the Merritt Parkway at top speed?” The kid answered, “I don’t know, like...80?” Dave answered, “120.” That’s miles per hour. Yikes!

5. Dave wants to raise the speed limit. He even got his mom, Dorothy, to ask First Lady Hillary Clinton if she could have her husband raise the Connecticut speed limit during the 1994 Winter Olympics. Letterman says that if the speed limit is increased, “people can rush home not to watch CBS.”

4. Dave likes vintage cars. On one memorable visit to Los Angeles, he taped a segment tooling around with Zsa Zsa Gabor in a classic T-Bird. The unlikely duo visited every single drive-thru fast food restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.

3. Dave’s a good sport. Despite all the speeding tickets, there’s a link to the Connecticut State Police site on the Official David Letterman Home Page.

2. Dave uses car analogies. He says the feud between him and late-night TV rival Jay Leno is just a professional rivalry. “It’s like car companies, Ford and General Motors,” Letterman once told Howard Stern. “You want to do better than the competition, and that’s the extent of it.”

Of course, he also admits he hasn’t spoken to Leno, an avid car collector, in eight years and that “The only way I would call Jay Leno is when I need my car tuned.”

1. Dave’s secret to success: ”One can of motor oil in my engine, one can of motor oil in my pants!”

— Bill Brioux