Most car builders pick a lane: restoration purists on one side, wild custom builders on the other. Mike Finnegan never really did, and it turned a road-trip video he shot as a side project into one of the most influential automotive franchises online. When the network behind that franchise shut its doors, he simply built a new one.
Most car builders pick a lane — restoration purists on one side, wild custom builders on the other — but Mike Finnegan has spent his career refusing to choose. What started as a road-trip video he and a co-worker filmed almost as a joke ended up becoming one of the most influential automotive shows on the internet, spawning an entire family of spinoffs built around one idea: cars do not have to be finished, perfect, or even particularly safe to be worth building. When the network behind that empire shut its doors, the obvious ending would have been retirement from the spotlight. Instead, Finnegan just picked a different platform and kept building. What does it take to stay relevant in car culture for over a decade without ever really changing your approach?
From a Road-Trip Video to an Automotive Empire
Finnegan came up through Hot Rod Magazine as a staff editor before joining Motor Trend Group in 2009, where a road-trip video he shot with colleague David Freiburger turned into Roadkill almost by accident. The show's success spun off an entire family of spinoffs — Hot Rod Garage, Faster with Finnegan, Engine Masters — all built around the same unpolished, build-it-and-drive-it philosophy that made the original a hit.
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What Happens When the Network Pulls the Plug
In November 2024, the closure of MotorTrend Productions ended Roadkill and its spinoffs after more than a decade on air. Rather than step away, Finnegan simply moved his projects to his own YouTube channel, Finnegan’s Garage, picking up roughly where the network shows left off — proof that the audience was always attached to the builder, not the platform.
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