NPR’s Car Talk Hosts to Retire

Tom and Ray Magliozzi who dub themselves Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers plan to record the last new episode of National Public Radio's Car Talk at the end of September.

The raucous duo, who dispense car repair advice, jokes and brain-twisters to callers, began their show began on Boston's WBUR radio station in 1977. The program has aired nationwide for 25 years, averaging about 3.3 million listeners per week.

Despite their blue-collar demeanor, both are graduates of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tom Magliozzi, 74, eventually earned a doctorate and became a technology consultant and college professor. The brothers started a do-it-yourself auto repair shop in Cambridge, Mass., in the early 1970s. Ray, 63, still runs the more traditional shop it evolved into, the Good News Garage.

They announced their retirement on the cartalk.com Web site in a note entitled "Time to Get Even Lazier." NPR says it will continue to broadcast Car Talk in the form of programs assembled from the best material in the more than 1,200 programs in the show's archives.