Motor Trend Kills Roadkill

Roadkill started out simple. Hot Rod magazine stalwarts David Freiburger and Mike Finnegan came together to wrench on cars, roadtrip, and create enormous clouds of tire smoke. The show quickly found a diehard fanbase that came to love the camaraderie and adventure as much as the endless V8-powered shenanigans. Now, sadly, we’re being told that it’s all over.

On Sunday night, we received the news that time was up for the Motor Trend show that started it all. Host Mike Finnegan took to an old Reddit post to announce the end of an era. “I just learned that it’s over,” said Finnegan. “After the end of Season 13, which we just finished filming a few weeks ago, there will be no new episodes of RK filmed.”

According to Finnegan, it’s not just Roadkill on the chopping block. “The Motor Trend production company is shutting down… No specific reason was given to me for its demise. ” said Finnegan. “We had a an excellent run and I’m proud of what the team accomplished but this does seem to be the end of Roadkill… I’m unsure of who owns the Roadkill IP or who to ask why it ended,” noted Finnegan.

End of an Era

Roadkill first debuted on YouTube in 2012. The first episode El Paso to LA: The Hard Way, would set the tone for the series to come. Freiburger and Finnegan set out to buy a junker for just $1,500. They aimed to drive it back from Texas to LA with minimal investment, relying on their wits and wrenching abilities along the way. This became the bedrock of Roadkill—the duo buying a rusty heap, before repairing it or executing some bonkers engine swap, followed by a roadtrip or a (usually unsuccessful) track event.

Endless jokes and banter would flow back and forth between “The Guys,” as they tackled each junkyard rescue or near-hopeless rebuild. They’d tangle with blown head gaskets and thrown rods, along with plenty of mouse droppings and the endless threat of hantavirus. As episodes racked up views in the millions, the success started to spread to the rest of Motor Trend’s shows, too. Roadkill even spawned multiple spinoffs—particularly the excellent Roadkill Garage that paired Freiburger with the Mopar legend that is Steve Dulcich. There was even a magazine, too, at one point.

While the series started out as free-to-watch on YouTube, it didn’t stay that way forever. Motor Trend eventually moved the show exclusively on to Motor Trend On Demand, its in-house streaming platform. Eventually, this would end up a part of the discovery+ in the wake of Discovery’s purchase of Motor Trend in 2017. Over time, some fans around the world were cut off from the program as Motor Trend ceased allowing users outside the US and Canada to access the service.

In recent years, Motor Trend had been putting a number of shows to bed. 2022 saw long-running off-road romp Dirt Every Day draw to a close. Other fun properties, like Hot Rod Garage and Faster with Newbern and Cotton came to an end, too, leaving fans speculating as to the seemingly bleak future ahead. Many hosts ended up producing their own content via personal channels on YouTube, suggesting the passion was still strong even if their production company wasn’t backing them any longer.

Roadkill had a way of turning cars into characters. Fans fell in love with the Disgustang, the Mazdarati, and of course, the ever-beleagured Rotsun.

Nevertheless, Roadkill persisted until now, the gem in the crown. Unsurprising, given Freiburger and Finnegan had unlocked the sort of chemistry as hosts that is rarely seen outside the hallowed Top Gear trio.

Keen-eyed fans would have seen the writing on the wall some time before today. Notably, Mike Finnegan took to Reddit a month ago, and prospects looked dire, even then. Finnegan seemed to suggest that the problem was a corporate decision from above—somewhere in the Warner Brothers/Discovery organization that has owned Motor Trend since 2017. In his own words:

We just wrapped up the end of our 13th “season”. Roadkill has never had a traditional “seasons”. Since its inception, we have shot a new episode each month of the year (we usually produce 13 or more episodes per calendar year) and never took any significant breaks from filming of more than a few weeks. Around July of each year somebody from the Motor Trend team would tell us we were to continue filming into the new year, meaning we had been “greenlit” for another season.

This year is different; So far, nobody I work directly with at Motor Trend seems to know whether or not any of the MT car shows will continue because now that we are owned by WB/Discovery, there are other people in involved in those decisions. I don’t even know who the decision-makers are. What I have been told is that the process for shows to be “greenlit” is different at WB/Discovery and that it takes longer for the decision to be made whether or not to continue with a show. I don’t know whether this is the end of Roadkill or not but the lack of communication doesn’t give me hope that the show will continue. Wish I had better news, guys and gals. Right now the best thing we can all do is support our favorite out of work gear heads by watching re-runs where they are available and also watching everyone’s YouTube channels and cross our fingers the shows all return in 2025. 🙂

More than most, David and Mike knew how to have a good time powered by gasoline.

Time comes for all of us, and it seems that the Roadkill story has now drawn to an end. It’s a sting this writer feels personally. Mike and David showed us all the simple joy of taking an absolute wreck and bringing it back to life—even if you only got it barely limping with a bad tune and torches for headlights. More than that, they showed us how great it could be to share this joy with friends. They inspired me to try my own hand at rescuing old bangers with raw eggs and a dream, and that’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had under the hood of a car.

Fans and pundits will naturally speculate as to why this came to pass. Amidst tough times for many media outlets, no cancellation is ever a true surprise. Ultimately, the sad thing is simply this—there will be just one more season of merriment and all-American adventure to take in before the Roadkill story ends for good. Vale!

Image credits: Motor Trend via screenshot