Tom Magliozzi, one of the co-hosts of NPR's popular Car Talk program, died Monday at the age of 77 due to complications from Alzheimer's disease.
Tom and his brother, Ray — aka "Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers" — bantered, joked, and offered automobile advice for 25 years on the weekly NPR show Car Talk. The brothers began the show at WBUR in Boston in 1977 and brought it to NPR's national audience in 1987. Since the brothers retired in 2012, reruns of the show have been aired weekly on member stations for the past two years — a testament to the popularity of the show and its hosts.
"Tom's been such a dominant, positive personality amongst us for so long that all of us in the public radio family — and I include our millions of listeners — will find this news very difficult to receive," Car Talk Executive Producer Doug Berman said in a statement posted on NPR.org on Monday.
The public radio station announced the sad news on its Facebook and Twitter accounts Monday afternoon.
Tom and his brother/co-host, Ray, who is 12 years younger, grew up in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated from MIT.
Tom claimed to have invented the concept of the of the "do-it-yourself auto repair shop," and he and his brother opened such a shop in Cambridge in 1973 called Hacker's Heaven. They later converted it into a more standard repair shop called the Good News Garage, which became a profitable business. "What a concept," its website reads. "Our mechanics explain how stuff works and never sell you stuff you don't need or want."
They continued to work in their garage while they made Car Talk, which started as a program on the local public radio station WBUR in Boston in 1977. They brought it to NPR 10 years later and won a Peabody Award in 1992. They retired in 2012.
In lieu of flowers, the Magliozzi family has asked that friends and listeners make a donation to either the Alzheimer's Association or their favorite public radio stations in Tom's memory:
"It's just one more gift to us from a guy who gave so much to our network and its listeners over the decades."
"Don't drive like my brother."
Read a touching tribute to Tom's life and work and listen to some of his funniest moments on NPR.org.
npr.org
"If there was one thing that defined Tom Magliozzi, it was his laugh. It was loud, it was constant, it was infectious."