After 13 seasons, MotorTrend’s Roadkill will reportedly come to an end. The popular show was cohosted by former Hot Rod editors David Freiburger and Mike Finnegan and featured exactly what enthusiasts actually wanted to see in a car show: real people doing awesome stuff with cool cars without all the manufactured drama of you saw on every other version of Yelling Goatee Man Garage. To see it finally get canceled after being on the air since 2012 and surviving the move behind a paywall is definitely disappointing.
Finnegan announced the cancelation in a Reddit post over the weekend, saying:
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 Motor Trend production company is shutting down. No specific reason was given to me for its demise. We had a 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 of who owns the RK IP or who to ask why it ended.
We don’t have many details beyond what Finnegan shared, but it doesn’t exactly sound like the decision to cancel Roadkill was communicated in advance, nor is it encouraging to hear that MotorTrend’s production company is being shut down. Then again, ruining good things is kind of Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav’s thing, and, since MotorTrend is now part of Discovery, which is owned by Warner Bros., it was really only a matter of time before Roadkill got the axe. We’ve already lost Dirt Every Day, Hot Road Garage, and Engine Masters, after all.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably include the fact that I worked at MotorTrend for a couple of years before leaving for a different opportunity, so I’m not exactly unbiased here. I started right about the time they announced the joint venture and was there for a lot of the turbulence that followed. I loved most of my coworkers and would still consider several of them friends, but it also never quite felt like Discovery knew what to do with us.
I’ve reached out to both Finnegan and Freiburger to see if they can share any more information, but unfortunately, they weren’t immediately available to comment. If I hear back from either one, I’ll be sure to update this post accordingly.