Thomas Magliozzi Plaque

For more than 30 years, devoted gear-heads and appreciative amateurs tuned in to the National Public Radio (NPR) show Car Talk. From 1987 to 2012, Tom and Ray Magliozzi donned the personas of “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers” and dispensed on-the-fly car repair advice, humor, and logic puzzles to over 3,000,000 listeners weekly.

Although the Magliozzis specialized in self-deprecating humor, often noting that their advice was “unencumbered by the thought process,” both were graduates of the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The brothers operated a garage in Cambridge, MA through the 1980s, but the radio show’s offices were located in “Car Talk Plaza” in the middle of Harvard Square, behind the window sign for the fictional law firm of Dewey, Cheetham & Howe. 

Although the brothers stopped recording new shows in October of 2012, the Best of Car Talk held its time slot for another five years and re-runs are still broadcast on some NPR stations. Tom Magliozzi passed away on November 3, 2014, at age 77.