"Car Talk" Putting on Brakes
After 25 years, the chatty pair of mechanic brothers from Boston are calling it quits
Sad news: Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as the Saturday morning radio mechanics on NPR's "Car Talk," are calling it quits.
The show will continue to air in reruns, but after 25 years of giving both useful and hilarious advice on car maintenance to callers with every manner of malfunction, no new episodes will be produced, NPR announced.
Older brother Tom is 74 years old, while Ray is 63.
How do you feel about the end of Car Talk? What are some of your favorite memories from the show? Tell us in comments.
Andy Bienstock, program director for WYPR, the NPR affiliate in Baltimore, said the station plans to run reruns in the Saturday slot, and “if we replace it with anything, we’ll think long and hard about it,” he told Patch.
“Sometimes in radio, there’s just magic,” he said. “There’s no other way to put it. Tom and Ray’s personalities, the way they come over the air, is sort of magic.”
It was so magic in fact, that Bienstock said the duo even made NPR fundraisers tremendously funny to listen to.
“Week in and week out, they could make me not only laugh out loud, but smile, and every once in awhile, I learned something from it,” he said.
The show was first broadcast on WBUR in Boston in 1977. It's now the most popular program on NPR and is heard coast-to-coast.
Don W.
3:10 pm on Friday, June 8, 2012
What??? No more Click and Clack?
Lisa Rossi
3:14 pm on Friday, June 8, 2012
I know, right! They taught me not to switch gears on my car unless it was stopped. If you can believe it, I ruined the transmission on two cars as a young adult, and one day I heard them say that on their show, and I was like, "Aha!"