When competition resumed after World War II he progressed from rallies to hill climbs, sports car racing and single-seaters.

Although a prodigiously gifted driver who early in his career won the admiration of senior competitors such as Raymond Sommer and Louis Chiron, he never made a full commitment to racing.

Further, as a child his heart and kidneys were damaged by nephritis and acromegaly, and deteriorating health in adulthood imposed its own constraints on his racing.

In sports car racing, he achieved Aston Martin's first postwar international victory, and also the first successes for Jaguar's XK120 model in both England and America.

Among his close friends were Jaguar founder William Lyons (to whom he lent his BMW 328 for detailed mechanical investigation during the planning and design of the XK120) and Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix engineering supremo Rudolf Uhlenhaut.

The car was the supercharged straight-eight Delage previously raced by Earl Howe, Dick Seaman and Prince Bira.

Having lost some 200 yards to the rest of the field, Johnson worked his way up to fourth behind Prince Bira, Reg Parnell and Bob Gerard but a spark plug melted four laps from the end, forcing him out.

The results were: In November 1947 Leslie Johnson acquired English Racing Automobiles, together with one of their prewar ERA E-Type single-seaters.

Johnson's ambitious and technically advanced E-Type successor, the G-Type ERA, was designed to race in both Grands Prix and Formula 2.

In 1951 Johnson was to have driven the new 600 bhp V16 BRM in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, but he was unable to reach the circuit in time for a pre-race test session in the very early morning.

[15] In December 1952 Johnson, Stirling Moss, rally driver David Humphrey, and navigator John Cutts crewed a Humber Super Snipe Mark IV on a journey from Oslo, Norway, to Lisbon, Portugal—a total of 16 countries and 3,380 miles—in 3 days, 17 hours and 59 minutes.

With "heroic driving, particularly from Stirling Moss and Leslie Johnson" they finished at Lisbon 30 hours earlier than Garrad had expected, despite traffic, sheet ice, blizzards, and snowdrifts up to 18 inches deep en route.