R.I.P. Tom Magliozzi, The Co-Host Of NPR’s ‘Car Talk’

I have no proof to back up this likely wildly inaccurate claim, but: the majority of Car Talk listeners are clueless when it comes to cars. I know I am (gas goes in…gas thank??? What a country!), and so is my father, yet whenever I drove around him when I was a child, we would always make sure to listen to Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers.

Their boisterous, yet never obnoxious voices were immediately familiar and welcome, which is why I’m sad to say that Tom (Click) died today after complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 77.

Tom and his brother, Ray, became famous as “Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers” on the weekly NPR show Car Talk. They bantered, told jokes, laughed and sometimes even gave pretty good advice to listeners who called in with their car troubles.

If there was one thing that defined Tom Magliozzi, it was his laugh. It was loud, it was constant, it was infectious.

“His laugh is the working definition of infectious laughter,” says Doug Berman, the longtime producer of Car Talk. He remembers the first time he ever encountered Magliozzi. “Before I ever met him, I heard him, and it wasn’t on the air,” he recalls. (Via)

Jeff Garlin, Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman — they got nothing on his laugh. Anyway, I emailed my father when I heard about what happened to Magliozzi. His response: “Sh*t…I just listened to their show in the car Saturday morning, as I do most weeks.” The episode he heard, just like every episode for the past two years, is old; Click and Clack retired in 2012. But such is the devotion they inspired, even among those who’d rater destroy their ride than try to fix it themselves.

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