Tom Wolfe in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby called him The Last American Hero. Not just called him that. He wrote it as if he were shouting it out to Gawd and his own deaf family like this:

Finally, one night they had Junior trapped on the road up toward the bridge at Millersville, there’s no way out of there, they had the barricades up and they could hear this souped-up car roaring around the bend, and here it comes–but suddenly they can hear a siren and see a red light flashing in the grille, so they think it’s another agent, and boy, they run out like ants and pull those barrels and boards and sawhorses out of the way, and then–Ggghhzzzzzzzhhhhhgggggzzzzzzzeeeeeong!–gawdam! there he goes again, it was him, Junior Johnson! with a gawdam agent’s si-reen and a red light in his grille!

Now in age Junior has settled down to commerce, to what he knows best other than driving and conniving — that is dealing in moonshine.

William Keesler reports in The Dispatch that Johnson is selling “autographed bottles of Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon liquor” up there in Lexington, NC where they could be eating BBQ instead.