There's a high school kid where I work currently (John Deere factory) who is an apprentice tractor mechanic, he's a huge Roadkill fan and is usually wearing one of their shirts. He drives a pretty cool lifted K5 Blazer and knows his stuff.
I don't think a lot of you older guys understand what this show and Freiburger, Finnegan and Dulcich did for younger gearheads who grew up way after muscle cars became valuable collector cars. I remember as a teenager in the 2000s when classic Mopars started bringing in big bucks at the fancy auctions, I thought they were unattainable dream cars that I couldn't get into unless I had $20k to drop. Everyone my age and younger thought the same thing. When I got my '70 Duster and would talk to other car guys about it they always said something along the lines of "I'd love to get into classic muscle like that but I don't have the money or skills." My reaction was, "you're fooling yourself". Compared to the late-model imports all the young guys were into at the time, American cars from the 60s and 70s are a joke to work on.
The later seasons of these shows did get a little deep with the production value and support staff but the core ideas remained. You don't need a restored numbers-matching classic with pedigree to have fun. There are old cars and trucks out there that may have been boring and basic from the factory but converting them to a fun muscle machine is NOT hard. Get something, ANYthing, from the Big 3 that is RWD, get it running and road-worthy, and drive the wheels off of it! It won't be a real SS454 Chevelle or Hemi Cuda but who cares! I guarantee if these shows hadn't happened, the current interest in classic cars from younger generations (which is pretty significant, contrary to what all the negative Nancies whining about smart phones and EVs think) would be non-existent.
