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
David Zaslav deserves all the awful things that propriety and legality prevent me from writing. Also public ridicule.
First Coyote vs Acme and now this.
Actually however, this is sort of like one of those obituaries of somebody you had no idea it was still alive, as I thought Road Kill had ended ages ago.
Disappointing but not surprising; I had a MT+ subscription and canceled earlier this year as the MT app wasn’t supported on my new TV. Warner/Discovery has a ton of problems and these properties just weren’t their priority.
Now bring Mike and David to the Autopian!
This sucks. Roadkill was a YouTube/Streaming staple for car guys. Seeing what you could only day dream becoming a reality on the screen. Engine Masters showed a ton of great info and informed me a lot when it comes to tuning and engine building. Roadkill Garage was awesome as Dulcich and Freiburger arguably had an even better chemistry than with Finnegan in the mix.
Also, I assume this is the end of “Roadworthy Rescues” hosted by Derek Bieri, that guy and show are awesome. Thankfully he makes his own content most of the time so it’s not a total loss. I’m sure he hates to see that paycheck go, though.
Had a similar thought. Season 3 of Roadworthy Rescues comes out in December and I suspect it will be the last one. Luckily his Youtube channel is thriving.
This sucks, I really liked that show. To borrow a comment from someone on another site, it looks like they actually did loose the shop this time.
ROFL!
Zaslav is just killing anything and everything good. What a heap of garbage.
Yep. Only Davis Zaslav would look at the prospect of Turner losing the NBA after basically being the face of the NBA for thirty years, with their coverage absolutely beloved the whole time, and go “Aces! That will be some real savings that I can claim as extra revenue!”
While he still continues to show up court side at Knicks games and claim he’s a lifelong basketball fan
He’s a vulture.
I was an MTOD subscriber but let it lapse when they moved to Discovery+. The end was in sight when the MT content kept getting grouped without a second thought. D+, then with HBO’s offering.
Makes the Might Car Mods boys look pretty smart to keep control of their own destiny.
I was thinking about them the other day and couldn’t remember what the heck MCM stood for. So thank you.
“Mid-century modern” when I’m looking at cool houses, duh.
(Also, those mad Aussies when I’m not.)
Can MT get rid of FantomWorks and Junkyard Empire? They get stale after 10-plus years. I’ll let them run the original Wheeler Dealers, produced in the U.K. with Edd China,though.
I’ll take Ant Andsted too.
I was an early MTOD subscriber, and was very happy with where my money was going. The deals for annual subscriptions that came with Hot Wheels cars of Roadkill cars were great, and all the content available made it a pretty easy decision. The move to Discovery+ was frustrating. I am not interested in Discovery+, and my annual renewal date has given me a while before a massive jump in cost that I was questioning the value of. I guess this solves that problem…
I watched Roadkill and the other shows with my dad, and we have had so much fun watching Freiburger and Finnegan get into shenanigans. Starting all the way back when I was still living at home to our new annual pilgrimage to LS Fest, watching Stubby Bob continue to fail. I’m very sad that it’s coming to an end, and very frustrated and upset at WBD killing another IP that I enjoyed quite a bit. Roadkill still has potential. Dirt Everyday was a favorite even though I’m not into offroading. Engine Masters was such deep digs into engines and was fascinating. Faster was fun. I loved the Superstreet show with Nads. Etc. This is a dumb move, especially with Motor Trend having built a whole brand around this.
I hope the various hosts keep doing what they love, those now out of work find excellent new opportunities, and that something will be there to fill the void. And that maybe Finn will get the Rotsun out of this, and finally make it fail to fail…
I was reasonably happy to pay for MTOD (even though us in the UK got a much poorer deal), but the one show I really think that should have stayed on Youtube was Engine Masters, just because such an informative show deserved to be accessible to everyone.
I never really ‘got’ why VTEC/VVTI/etc was sucha big deal, until Engine Masters did a show looking at how changing the cam shaft ’tilts’ the torque curve, and I realised that if you have a variable cam, you can effectively have your low-end-torque cake, and eat your high-RPM-torque too.
When Freiburger started his Youtube Channel, I knew this was happening. As with Donut, Car Throttle and Hoonigan, when the presenters leave or start their own channel, you know its cooked.
On one hand, it sucks Warner Bro’s Discovery has killed yet another internet property that they never understood anything about (just like Rooster Teeth).
On the other hand, I’m not even sad it’s gone. First it was the Roadkill vs GMG nonsense, then Finnegan with that 2J Charger and them putting it right in the mix. Definitely wasn’t a fan of that.
To be somewhat fair to WB regarding Rooster Teeth at least, I read RT hadn’t turned a profit in 10 years. You could argue that’s because their various overlords up through WB forced them to expand into expensive production areas they weren’t really good at (remember Laser Team?) so overhead went way up without equivalent revenue growth, but still, 10 years is a really long time to prop up a media company that isn’t profitable.
No idea about RK though. I loved my MotorTrend subscription when it was its own thing and just a few bucks a month, but dropped off after they rolled into Discovery+
WB really didn’t get a foot into RT until 2018, before that it was Fullscreen who I believe green lit Lazer Team (I do remember that vividly, I love it!). If they weren’t making money, it was likely due to the head honcho’s not really controlling costs. Between Geoff & Burnie, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the two main spenders.
I like MTOD as well, it was very simple, and I liked getting the Rotsun Hot Wheel for subscribing when I did. But the novelty wore off of the app when I wasn’t very interested in much else besides watching RK, so I let that die. Kinda like WB, to be honest.
I just like finding other RT fans in the wild on other sites, haha. AH was my jam from 2011-2018ish. I feel like The Regulation Podcast and gameplay is a spiritual reboot of AH back to the time I enjoyed it the most.
they should continue with the show called “Fuck you this it my road Kill Show Now”
This is a real bummer.
I have been a long time RK fan (watching since season 1 or 2 from the Youtube days). Most car fans have a favorite RK car, just like they have a favorite Top Gear moment. Both shows were iconic for similar and very different reasons.
My favorite RK car is Stubby Bob. It is one of the more ridiculous things they’ve built, but the wheelie that dragged the trailer hitch (and probably took a year off Finnegan’s life) was about the most epic thing I had ever seen. The timing of that episode was neat too. I knew what was going to happen due to the previews, but my friend who I was visiting in Chicago the day the episode aired did not… Watching his reaction to that giant wheelie made my week.
The next day, we were driving up to Milwaukee to visit some buddies who live there and I saw that the RK guys were at the fairgrounds that day doing meet and greets, and showing off RK cars (General Mayhem, RK van, Mazdaratti (RIP), and Stubby Bob). When I met the RK guys, I was star struck. They were super nice and signed my shirt, and my entire weekend was made.
I doubt the guys will ever see this comment, but I want to thank them for the years of entertainment they’ve provided, along with the change in mindset (don’t get it right; get it running). I guess the odd silver lining is that no one got killed doing the show. I hope that they will keep the Duct Tape drags and RK nights events going (maybe under a different name).
I had the great pleasure of seeing some of the Roadkill cars in person at a Power Tour stop near my hometown in 2017. I was actually star struck to see them in person. It’s hard to pick a favorite over all the vehicles they’ve had over the years, but the original (pre-Hellcat) General Mayhem is hard to beat.
I found Roadkill early in the Pandemic. Entertainment options were thin at that time, and it certainly fit the bill. It, and other Youtube videos along those same lines, helped keep me sane, and were somewhat educational to boot.
However, I noticed a decline in the insanity as time went on. It went from Macgyvering a car to actually fixing them properly with good parts and going on a proper road trip to a proper destination, which isn’t nearly as entertaining.
And while I get you gotta make money, I’m so done with the shitty T-shirts that everyone is selling…
When your show is called Roadkill you’ve got to expect an unhappy coupling with a corporate eighteen-wheeler.
And just like that, my Discovery+ subscription has ceased to have a purpose. I watch Gold Rush, but that’s already set up on my Plex server as I’ve been watching it longer than I’ve had a Disco+ subscription. I was one of the folks that my MTOD sub just converted into a Disco+, I don’t have a use for it beyond the Motortrend stuff.
I had actually nuked my MTOD subscription when they cancelled DED a while back, and I would watch sometimes with my free Max subscription. But somewhere in there the whole feeling changed.
I am really happy everyone is doing their own YouTube stuff these days, where it seems more genuine. I took my kids out of school in 2019 to go to a drag week event and Mike and Tony were super nice to talk to. Hopefully we can have more roadkill inspired stuff in the future.
I did the same. Dirt Every Day was my jam, and I was caught up on Roadkill enough that it wasn’t a big deal. Now I’m just bummed, though not surprised given DF just brought abundant life to his YouTube channel, but at least that YouTube channel is making up for a lot of it in good ways (not to mention the DED guy’s YouTube channels).
As one of the overseas viewers whose money MT didn’t want to take, I have had to do without Roadkill for a while now, but recently got to catch up to some extent when someone mirroring their episodes popped up on YouTube. With the way things have been going for automotive content, and long-form content in general, it’s not really surprising that this is the outcome, and Freiburger’s channel starting to post videos regularly and in earnest is a signal to me that he probably saw the writing on the wall.
I’ve been following Finnegan for ages, but find the kind of stuff he gets up to keeps my interest less and less with time, but Freiburger’s channel is just great. He’s a font of knowledge and for him to stop producing videos would be a shame. Nice to see he recognises the need for half decent production values, too.
Perhaps with Roadkill coming to a close it’ll free all these personalities to work together again, and on a platform where people can actually consume the content.
I’ve really been enjoying recent Freiburger videos in which he’s free to talk about history—the Pomona one was excellent. Between him and Brian Lohnes, I’ve learned way more about the history of drag racing and speed records than I knew I wanted to know
I like Finnegan, and I’m quite certain if I met him in real life we’d get along quite well, but I stopped watching his channel because his tastes in what he likes to do to cars is so different than mine, I lost interest as well.
I took have been enjoying Freiburger’s new channel, and the historical based content. Since I am US based, I bought a couple sticker packs with the laughable hope of winning that ’68 Camaro (Ha!). But it’ll be ok when I don’t, because I actually wanted the stickers.
I could go for some of his merch too. I wonder what the P&P on an old Camaro would be…
Perhaps with Roadkill coming to a close it’ll free all these personalities to work together again, and on a platform where people can actually consume the content.
Now that’s a thought, keep it on YouTube where at least you can survive without corporate involvement. Advertising sure, but not ownership. Set it up like a trust, where it can’t be bought or stolen, and all the various personalities that have been pushed out by Venture Capitalists, create a “network”. Something like Hagerty has done, they have rusty wrenching videos, Barn Find Hunter, JDM and euro content, Jason Cammisa, lots of varied content. I only watch a small portion of it.. They can all be under one umbrella even if they have different content.
Well when I said it, I did mean on a more “local” level, with smaller, more personal channels and the occasional collaboration, but you could be on to something there! What you suggest sounds like something that could develop organically over time, which would be cool, and probably more sustainable in the long term.
Tony Angelo (who has one of my favourite channels at the moment) didn’t stick around for too long on Hagerty.
Well, I have no idea what goes on around Hagerty, possibly all kinds of corporate nonsense. The way I can see it helping is it creates critical mass, cross colabs and some safety in numbers. I use the Hagerty channel as an example because when Zach and Jeremiah left Donut, I subscribed to their channel and have watched exactly zero of their content. Meanwhile I tripped across Barn Find Hunter, and from there watch Jason Cammisa, and Redline Rebuild on the regular. I came across them more organically and I probably gave them more of a look than if they came though the algorithm, which is 80% useless.
Yeah, I don’t know… Feels like the Herbs are dead set on starving us of content, hoping they can usher in a new era of AI generated crap that’s cheap to produce and distribute via the channels they’ve been buying out. I have a feeling all these low effort AI video channels that have been popping up on youtube are part of this, they’re there to get us used to such bad content – basically AI-generated cuts of videos and images stolen by the AI model, with an AI voice regurgitating text that was also mostly scraped from online sources – that once a big corporation starts doing it, they’ll be able to create much better-looking crap.
I really hope this fucking around leads to them finding out people watch content also because of the creators themselves. I know it’s next to impossible for creators to mantain the same level of production value without the financial backing of the Herbs, but I’m pretty sure we’ll all gladly watch low-buget content from other humans rather than polished AI turds.
Ah, the latest victim(s) of the WB/Discovery that axed the show Final Space as a “tax write-off” before deleting it from all platforms and blocking its creator from making the show for anyone else. Whoever owns the Roadkill IP, it sure as hell won’t be the talent. They will just be left out in the cold to lament the evils of penny-pinching corporate bullshit.
Aw, I didn’t realise Final Space got done that dirty.
Westworld also had the same fate
Damn. I loved Roadkill’s print/mag spinoff, too. Elena Scherr, Eric Rood — just a murderer’s row of good car weirdos.
There have been many herby decisions around the extended Motor Trendiverse over the years — cutting off international fans, the entire way the closure of Roadkill’s print side was handled — but WB/Discovery’s David Zaslav is a gigantic herb, full stop. Remember those huge recent showbiz strikes? This company’s herbery was a big contributing factor. I guess he wasn’t content with angering damn near everyone who makes his giant media conglomerate’s content and had to kill off a ton of car shows, too.
Enjoy the Roadkill archives before they get taken down for inconceivable reasons, I guess. This sucks.
Well this sucks but isn’t surprising. Only reason I have had Discovery+ was to keep the forever loop of RK on and the occasional check in on Deadliest Catch. I wonder if they will keep it on there like they have the other shows that have been cancelled.
I had a gut feeling that Finnegan wouldn’t be back for the next season as he just didn’t seem into it anymore like he was in previous seasons. Really was thinking Dave Chappelle would be the new host if Finn was gone but I guess nobody will be now.
I did feel that Finnegan’s love for it had gone a while back, when he first moved out of California. I haven’t watched in years, though, so I don’t know if that was a temporary thing or not.
I always felt the same. I know he addressed it somewhere along the lines that he wanted more time with family and I can’t fault the guy for that what so ever. He’s still churning out stuff on his personal YT page all the time so obviously still has the passion, just the circumstances changed I suppose.
It’s why he left Faster. RK films year round which was enough of a grind without having to commute from Georgia. I’ve got a ton of respect for Finnegan for doing that.
I absolutely agree with you. Never can fault somebody for wanting to be more present in their family life.
I always selfisly wanted to catch RK filming an episode when Freiburger came out to Georgia as I don’t live to far from where Finnegan is based and work in that area a bunch.
This is sad . . . although as noted several times in the article, the writing has been on the wall all year.
I remember finding Roadkill by randomly Googling “jeep hot rod” . . . they’d been doing it for about 2 years at that point, and I’ve been a fan ever since. They inspired me to get a car to work on, I built my first engine using what I learned through Roadkill Extras, and I certainly bought a lot of parts from their sponsors and after reviewing Engine Masters results!! I even went to a Roadkill event when it came to a track near me.
My enthusiasm may have waned in the past few years, but I still never miss an episode, and those guys were consistent from day one. So long Roadkill . . . I’ve truly enjoyed watching you all do your thing.
A show glorifying the Internal Combustion Engine headquartered in California…
shocked it lasted this long.
This just pisses me all kinds of off…
1. Motor Trend has killed every piece of car culture they’ve bought.
2. Nothing of value was lost by ending Roadkill.