To say that Jimmie Johnson’s success places him in elite company would be a massive understatement: He is one of just three drivers to achieve seven championships in the top-level NASCAR Cup series; even more incredible is that five of Johnson’s championships were earned consecutively in the 2006–2010 Cup seasons.

Johnson began racing for Hendrick Motorsports behind the wheel of the #48 car in 2001, going full-time in the NASCAR Nextel Cup series the following year. Steadily building momentum after a strong rookie season in 2002, by 2004 Johnson was regularly running up front, winning eight races and surprising everyone by finishing the season just eight points behind champion Kurt Busch (then the closest margin in NASCAR history).

Entering the 2005 season, NASCAR pundits claimed Johnson to be “among the favorites for the title,” with his #48 Chevrolet “viewed as the strongest by many in preseason testing at Las Vegas and in California.”

Hendrick Motorsports documentation (on file) illustrates that Johnson drove this Superspeedway-spec Lowe’s #48 chassis six times between 2003 and his championship 2006 season, with the pair’s most notable result together coming at the 2005 Budweiser Shootout 70-lap exhibition race on 12 February. From a 17th-place starting position among the 21-member grid which lined up on Daytona International Superspeedway that fateful evening, Johnson and this Monte Carlo chassis (HMS-11-02-267) clawed their way up to 5th place with 23 laps to go.

Though Ryan Newman grabbed a big lead when he took only two fresh tires on the required pit stop, Johnson, with four new tires, was the next fastest driver out of the pits. Johnson and chassis 267 then hunted down Newman over the next eight laps, and finally charged past him on lap 55 to take the lead. The Shootout’s closing laps featured a Johnson-led masterclass in defensive driving, as more than 10 challengers formed a tight peloton hoping—without result—to draft by Johnson and slingshot themselves to victory.

In addition to this significant win, Johnson raced this car to two additional top-five finishes (one each during the 2004 and 2006 seasons, respectively). Overall, in these six races, this car never finished outside the field’s top 10!

As presented today, chassis 267 has been restored by Hendrick Motorsports’ Certified Race Cars Program to its 2006 as-raced specifications. Beneath its iconic, gleaming Lowe’s #48 livery, it is fitted with a correct-type, 358-cubic-inch, 830-horsepower, SB2 V-8 racing engine coupled to a race-spec four-speed transmission and heavy-duty Hendrick superspeedway underpinnings.

Acquired by The Dare to Dream Collection in this authentic race-winning Hendrick Motorsports Lowe’s #48 racecar has been restored with the collector in mind and comes complete with Certificates of Authenticity, extensive documentation, a collection of race day photographs, as well as exclusive membership to the Hendrick Motorsports Certified Racecar Registry.