Take Five With Moonshine Runners, History, and Their Cars: Looking Back at Junior Johnson

Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!” published in his book The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, Junior Johnson, 1931–2019, was the prototypical NASCAR hero.

- Rob Kinnan

We’re all aware NASCAR started as a place for the illegal liquor (moonshine) runners in the Southeast to compete against each other on racetracks instead of windy, dirt mountain roads. Junior began as a legit ’shine runner until “Big Bill” France convinced him to drive his 1940 Fords and other liquor cars at his events.

Junior was instantly one of the initial stars of the series, winning 50 NASCAR races in the 1950s and 1960s, and going on to run his own team with drivers including Darel Dieringer, LeeRoy Yarbrough, Cale Yarbrough, Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip, Neil Bonnet, Terry Labonte, Geoff Bodine, Sterling Marlin, Jimmy Spencer, and Bill Elliott, all of whom are household names today. Junior was a gentle giant that you didn’t want to mess with on the track or off, and was so popular that President Ronald Reagan pardoned him for his 1956 moonshining conviction (for which he did a year in prison).

Back in 2005, HOT ROD did a story on the ’shine-running cars of Junior and his lifelong friend Willie Clay Call, and here are some excerpts. RIP, Junior, you were truly one of a kind.

-Rob Kinnan

From the October 2005 issue of HOT ROD:

Like old thoroughbreds in their stalls at a racing stable, the aging moonshine-hauling cars of Willie Clay Call sit at the ready in the garage next to his home in the Appalachian foothills of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their rear suspensions are still ultra-stiff and ready to conceal the weight of more than 100 gallons of white lightning that the cars would haul out of the foothills to Winston-Salem, Lexington, or other points east.