Remember Mike Finnegan? From Roadkill? Well, he’s back, not that he went anywhere, with a new show called Faster With Finnegan, and it's exactly how it sounds. Finnegan and his team take a car and decide to race it. And when they find it is falling short, they fix it up to go as fast as it can, in the most miniscule budget possible.
It’s a fairly cool concept and one that can be used practically, although when it comes to TV shows, things are always over-dramatized to make for good theatre. Even so, there are some practical takeaways from the show, which streams exclusively on Discovery’s MotorTrend app…
It’s a cool way to learn about the kind of budgeted modifications one can do, even though you do need to be a bit of an expert on what goes on under the hood of your vehicle. And if you are not into modifications yourself, it’s still an informative show about what people can do to cars to make them faster, on little to no budgets. So for anyone who likes cars, and likes fast cars even more, Faster with Finnegan makes for a good watch.
Here’s all the details and DL about Faster with Finnegan that we could dig up, and why it could make for an entertaining watch…
Meet Mike Finnegan, Long Time Car TV Guy
Mike Finnegan is the guy from Roadkill, the guy who does strange stuff to cars and has been doing so for a while now. He has been with Motor Trend since 2010 and when he’s not doing his horseplay in front of the camera, he’s a semi-pro boat racer and a good fabricator. Plus, he also runs his own YouTube channel, Finnegan’s Garage for his hardcore fans, and his oft-used line is “this is the best day at work ever!”
Roadkill has been on since 2012 and has been going strong ever since with more than 90 episodes and counting. Finnegan also does a mini-series on SEMA build, covering the show and its fantastic cars. He is known not just as a wacky car man but also as a writer and a producer for the shows.
And now, since 2020, he’s been on Faster with Finnegan.
What Is The Show All About?
Faster with Finnegan began on January 15, 2020, and featured six episodes in its first season which may, or may not have been cut short because of the pandemic. The title says it all, the aim is to make a vehicle go faster.
Mike Finnegan is the host of the show, along with his co-hosts, David Newbern (who partners him in Finnegan’s Garage) and Mike Cotton (owner of Midwest Images). The plot is simple, they get to buy a cheap car, and they plan to race it. Only, they have no idea about what they have to race the car against till after they have bought it.
Once they know who or what their competition is, they then have to accordingly modify the car, on a very, very slim budget, to make it race savvy enough not just to compete, but also win. And since the budget is this tight, the modifications have to work, even if they are technically a bit impractical to be put to real use.
After six episodes in 2020, the show came with its second season in February 2021 and has done another six episodes, the last airing in March 2021.
The Highs & The Lows Of Faster With Finnegan
For the fans of Roadkill, many of the vehicles shown in Faster with Finnegan will be recognizable because they were featured in Roadkill. So there is a bit of overlap.
Also, the premise is different in both the shows and there may be many in the audience that like one but not the other. And yes, there have been talks of the show being a bit OTT and we’re not just talking about the antics of Finnegan, but also the fact that some of the last-minute modifications they do to make a car race-worthy may not hold in real life, or even for a long time.
But amongst all the fun stuff there is plenty of useful information for auto enthusiasts to learn and remember because the Georgia trio has innumerable hours of car-building, modification, and fabrication between them. So they do know their cars, and their modifications very well. So sure, sometimes they lose and sometimes they win. But they sure look like they are having the time of their lives, with plenty of cool trucks and cars featured in the show. Like a hill-climbing Miata.
The show is fun, and there’s plenty of camaraderie in it, along with pranks, and jokes to make it one very entertaining watch. And it's okay if Faster with Finnegan does not inspire you to run to your garage and start amping up your beater to enter the tracks. Sometimes, let car TV be just that, an entertaining thing on telly.
Sources: TruckTrend, HotRodNetwork