Hendrick Motorsports formally launched the No. 48 entry for the 2002 Winston Cup Series season, with Jeff Gordon serving as a co-owner of the car alongside team principal Rick Hendrick. Gordon had encountered Johnson during the 2000 NASCAR Busch Series season and recognized his talent, advocating strongly for Hendrick to sign him. Johnson had previously driven for Herzog Motorsports in the Busch Series and spent the 2001 season splitting time between the Busch Series and four Winston Cup starts for Hendrick. When the full-time No. 48 program launched in 2002, Lowe's Companies became the primary sponsor, a relationship that would endure through 2018 and define the car's visual identity for nearly two decades.
Johnson's first full Cup season in the No. 48 immediately established his credentials. He won three races, earned the Daytona 500 pole as a rookie, and finished fifth in points. From there the program accelerated rapidly.
His first championship came in 2006, a year in which he also won the Daytona 500. The 2006 title initiated an extraordinary run: Johnson and the No. 48 won consecutive championships in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, making him the first and only driver in NASCAR history to claim five straight Cup Series titles. Crew chief Chad Knaus, who partnered with Johnson for the entirety of his Hendrick tenure, was the primary architect of the operation and went on to win five championships with the No. 48 team.
The 2007 season saw the team record ten wins. In 2008, Johnson won seven races and a career-high six pole positions, sweeping both Phoenix events. The 2009 campaign brought another seven victories including consecutive Dover wins, while 2010 added six more triumphs including a maiden road course win at Sonoma Raceway. The five-championship streak gave Johnson 33 Cup titles among his partnerships — all of them achieved in the No. 48.
A sixth title followed in 2013, a season in which Johnson also won his second Daytona 500 and added six victories. He led the standings for the majority of the regular season and sealed the championship with a calculated ninth-place finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway in the season finale.
The seventh and final championship came in 2016. Johnson won at Homestead to clinch the title after starting from the rear of the field due to a pre-race inspection penalty, passing Kyle Larson on the final restart to win the race and the championship simultaneously. The seventh title tied Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the most Cup Series championships in history.
The No. 48 was at the center of several landmark NASCAR events. At the 2004 Martinsville race, Johnson won while tragedy unfolded off-track: the plane carrying ten Hendrick Motorsports personnel — including Rick Hendrick's son Ricky, his twin nieces, his brother, and chief engine builder Randy Dorton — crashed into Bull Mountain in Virginia en route to the event. Johnson was informed of the losses after the race's completion.
In 2006 at Talladega, Johnson saved a near-certain crash during qualifying after spinning in front of the wall, recovering the car in a moment that was widely celebrated. The 2011 Talladega race produced one of the closest finishes in the track's history when Johnson nipped Clint Bowyer at the line by 0.002 seconds.
In 2017, at Dover, Johnson achieved his 83rd career win, tying NASCAR Hall of Famer Cale Yarborough on the all-time list. That victory also proved to be Johnson's final Cup Series win, ending an 83-race career total in the No. 48.
After Lowe's ended its primary sponsorship following 2018, Ally Financial assumed the role. Johnson went winless in 2018 and 2019, a marked departure from the team's earlier dominance, and announced in November 2019 that 2020 would be his final full-time Cup season. His farewell campaign included a second-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600, though the result was later disqualified following a failed post-race inspection.
Johnson ran his final race for the No. 48 team at Phoenix in November 2020, closing out 683 consecutive starts in Cup competition across his full-time tenure. The partnership with Knaus lasted seventeen seasons, the longest driver-crew chief relationship in NASCAR history. After Johnson's retirement the car number was retained by Hendrick Motorsports, subsequently fielded for Alex Bowman.
The No. 48 program redefined what a single-team NASCAR dynasty could look like in the modern era. The Hendrick Motorsports organization surpassed Petty Enterprises as the winningest team in Cup Series history during the 2021 Coca-Cola 600, a milestone built in large part on the championships and wins accumulated by the No. 48. Johnson's seven titles, 83 wins, and record five consecutive championships in the car cement the No. 48 as one of the most recognizable and historically significant entries in American motorsport.