NPR’s Car Talk To End?

Car Talk, which for twenty-five years has been one of the most popular programs on public radio, will be seeing drastic changes now that sibling hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi have decided to call it quits. The two, who actually do have extensive experience quieting noisy valves and repairing busted shocks, will record their last of over 1,200 weekly programs this coming autumn.

"My brother has always been ‘work-averse,’ " explained the seldom-serious Ray, 63. "Now, apparently, even the one hour a week is killing him!"

"It’s brutal!" added older brother Tom, who is approaching 75.

The Cambridge, MA-based brothers have spent their entire lives in the Boston area, something listeners can discern immediately. With their weekly puzzles and jokes – to which they always the first to laugh — and genial comments even auto-phobes have been drawn into the listening fold, though in the end they usually wind up offering some helpful information to listeners who might call up with problems ranging from how to get more power out of a Mustang to what’s the best way to stop squirrels from eating the insulation on an old Subaru’s spark plug wires.

The show won’t completely vanish as old episodes will be repurposed and continue on. While the shows occasionally stray into the topical, most episodes deal with timeless automotive questions stitched together with bad jokes that would have generated the same belly laughs a half century ago.

"We’re hoping to be like I Love Lucy and air ten times a day on NPR at Nite in 2075," Tom Magliozzi wrote in a note on their CarTalk.com website.

Over the years, the pair have fielded about 12,500 calls, according to Executive Producer Doug Berman, who estimates his team has enough material for at least eight years without the rebroadcasts repeating.

Car Talk began thirty-five years ago as a local show but began reaching a national audience when it was picked up by the public radio network twenty-five years ago, though it has continued broadcasting on Boston’s WBUR.

"Tom and Ray have become icons to millions of fans, including me, over the last twenty-five years," says NPR President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Knell.

For those who actually looked forward to hearing fresh advice about car repairs – perhaps looking to solve a problem of their own, Click and Clack won’t entirely hang up their tool belts. They plan to continue writing the syndicated, twice-weekly Dear Tom and Ray column. And NPR hints that along with the column and rebroadcasts, the brothers will continue to "put their feet in their mouths in surprising new ways on the web and Facebook."

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