Car
Talk is a hilarious, fast-paced
call-in program in which hosts Tom
and Ray Magliozzi take the
fear out of car repair and find
the fun in engine failure. Every
week, these uninhibited Boston
brothers dispense automotive first
aid and roadside philosophy to
more than 4.1 million listeners
on 588 public radio stations—and
the audience is still growing!
Winner of the Peabody, broadcasting's
most prestigious award, Car Talk has
been lauded by the media since its
national premiere in 1987. Segments
about Car Talk have appeared
on 60 Minutes, 20/20, The
Tonight Show, Late Night with
David Letterman, The Today
Show, and Martha Stewart Living,
along with print features in the New
York Times, Newsweek, Time, Smithsonian, USA
Today, People, and Rolling
Stone.
Car Talk is distributed by NPR via
satellite and airs in every major
market in the country. Car Talk also
produces “Click and Clack Talk
Cars,” a nationally syndicated,
twice-weekly newspaper column, distributed
by King Features Syndicate and carried
by 335 papers.
Car Talk’s Web
site receives more than 400,000
unique visitors each week and has
been hailed by Hotwired, the Los
Angeles Times, the New York Times,
PC Week, Wired, USA Today, and
Yahoo!
Tom And Ray Magliozzi
aka: Click And Clack, The Tappet
Brothers
Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the
Peabody Award-winning hosts of Car
Talk on NPR, are better known as “Click
and Clack, the Tappet Brothers” — taking
their names from the clickety-clack
sound made by aging autos. Tom, 66,
and Ray, 54, dispense car advice
in the broad accents of the tough
East Cambridge neighborhood where
they grew up. Both are graduates
of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
In 1973, the brothers opened a do-it-yourself
garage in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Hacker's
Haven" provided rented space
and tools for clients fixing their
own cars. But as hippies turned into
yuppies and car repair became more
complicated, “Hacker’s
Haven” turned into the “Good
News Garage,” a conventional
car repair service.
In 1977, Tom and Ray were invited
to the studios of NPR member station
WBUR in Boston, along with other
area mechanics, to discuss car repair.
Tom accepted the invitation, and
when he was invited back the following
week, he asked, “Can I bring
my brother, Ray?” The rest,
as they say, is history. The Magliozzis
were subsequently given their own
weekly program, Car Talk,
which soon attracted a large local
following.
In January 1987, then host Susan
Stamberg asked Tom and Ray
to be weekly contributors to NPR’s Weekend
Edition and on October 31,
1987, Car Talk premiered
as a national program, presented
by NPR.
Tom Magliozzi holds a doctorate
in marketing and has taught at Boston
and Suffolk Universities; he now
runs his own consulting business. Ray
Magliozzi is still at the Good
News Garage. He has taught adult
education automotive courses, worked
for the Consumer Affairs Division
of the state attorney general's office,
and is a member of the National Car
Care Council. The brothers also produce
a highly successful newspaper column
for King Features Syndicate, Click
and Clack Talk Cars, and an award-winning Web
site 
Tom and Ray's most recent books
are In Our Humble Opinion and A
Haircut in Horsetown and Other Great
Car Talk Puzzlers, both published
by Penguin Putnam. Their most recent
audio collections are Born
Not to Run: More Disrespectful Car
Songs, The Hatchback
of Notre Dame: More Car Talk Classics,
and Car Talk Car Tunes: The
Car Talk Compendium of Disrespectful
Car Songs, Volume 1.
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