It was a perfect time for the emergence of Johnson, who honed his driving skills in wild pre-dawn rides down country roads, with federal revenue agents in futile pursuit, delivering jars of the untaxed whiskey his father produced.

“Junior Johnson is one of the last of those sports stars who is not just an ace at the game itself, but a hero a whole people or class of people can identify with,” Mr. Wolfe wrote. “Junior Johnson is a modern hero, all involved with car culture and car symbolism in the South. A wild new thing.”

Mr. Wolfe’s profile inspired the 1973 Hollywood movie “The Last American Hero,” with Jeff Bridges portraying a character based on Johnson. His name was invoked in Bruce Springsteen’s song “Cadillac Ranch.”

In his years delivering moonshine, beginning when he was around 14, Johnson invented the “bootleg turn” when he was being chased by revenuers. He would put his car into second gear, turn the wheel and step on the pedal, creating a 180-degree spin that enabled him to zoom back past his pursuers.

He was just as aggressive on the track. He slid his cars through curves instead of riding the brakes so that he could quickly regain speed when he was back on a straightaway.

“I was good on the highway and good on the back roads,” he told The News-Journal of Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2008, recalling his old-time moonshine deliveries. “The track was not quite as exciting as it was running from the revenuers. If you got caught, you knew you was going to jail.”

Federal agents never caught up with Johnson on back-country roads, but in 1956, his second NASCAR season, they arrested him while he was tending to a family still. He was convicted of manufacturing untaxed whiskey and served 11 months at a federal prison in Ohio.