‘Roadkill’ Is Finished as MotorTrend Productions Reportedly Shuts Down

The enthusiast world just lost another great show. After Top Gear and The Grand Tour, MotorTrend’s Roadkill has reached the end of the road.

Mike Finnegan, one of the two Roadkill hosts, resurrected a two-year-old Reddit thread to announce the show’s end.

“I just learned that it’s over. After the end of season 13, which we just finished filming a few weeks ago, there will be no new episodes of RK filmed. The MotorTrend production company is shutting down. No specific reason was given to me for its demise. We had an excellent run and I’m proud of what the team accomplished, but this does seem to be the end of RK. I’m unsure who owns the RK IP or who to ask why it ended.”

Roadkill aired its first episode on YouTube in 2012. Keep in mind that the automotive media landscape was completely different at the time—the idea of a YouTuber wasn’t as clear-cut as it is today. Rather than reviewing new cars, hosts Finnegan and David Freiburger funneled their common passion into a show aimed at enthusiasts. In the first episode, the duo went to El Paso, Texas, spent $1,500 on a car, made it roadworthy, and drove it back to Los Angeles. Another catch was that they had to sell it on eBay Motors before returning to Los Angeles.

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Planning an adventure around a car that most would write off as a lost cause became Roadkill‘s trademark. The list of classics that appeared on the show over the years includes a 1971 Datsun 240Z powered by a Chevrolet S-10-sourced 4.3-liter V6 engine, a 1978 Lincoln Continental hacked into a coupe, and a 1980 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with a hydraulic suspension system that the duo drove to Las Vegas on three wheels.

Roadkill grew quickly in the 2010s. It spawned a spin-off series, a magazine launched in 2016, and an annual drag-racing festival called Roadkill Nights sponsored by Dodge. It was moved from YouTube to a streaming service called MotorTrend On Demand and it became available on Discovery+ when Discovery bought MotorTrend in 2017, according to The Autopian. Later, the show wound up on Max. While this business model seemingly worked for several years, Finnegan publicly questioned whether Roadkill would return for a 14th season in a post published on Reddit in October 2024.

There’s no word on what’s next for Finnegan and Freiburger. Both hosts have YouTube channels, so they haven’t fired up their last hot rod yet. If MotorTrend’s productions are shutting down, it’s reasonable to assume other shows will wind down in the not-too-distant future, so we’ve reached out to the company for clarification on that front.

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