‘Car Talk’s’ Hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Aka Click and Clack, to Step Down From NPR Show
he comic mechanics on NPR’s “Car Talk” are pulling in to the garage.
Brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi said Friday they will stop making new episodes of their joke-filled auto advice show at the end of September, 25 years after “Car Talk” began in Boston. Repurposed versions of old shows will stay on National Public Radio indefinitely, however.
The show airs every Saturday morning and is NPR’s most popular program.
“We’ve managed to avoid getting thrown off NPR for 25 years, giving tens of thousands of wrong answers and had a hell of a time every week talking to callers,” Ray Magliozzi said. “The stuff in our archives still makes us laugh. So we figured, why keep slaving over a hot microphone?”
The duo will continue writing their “Dear Tom and Ray” column twice a week, NPR said.
With their byplay and Boston accents, “Car Talk” was as much about laughs as motor advice. On last week’s show, a caller confessed that she had broken the clutches of some ex-boyfriends’ cars and was now worrying that she was damaging her own.
“That might be the reason none of your relationships lasted,” she was told.
The two men proved that public radio didn’t have to be stuffy, said Doug Berman, executive producer of the show. “Car Talk” began as a local call-in show on Boston’s BUR radio in 1977. It’s now on 660 stations across the country, with some 3.3 million listeners a week.
