I’ve dreaded this day for years, but every time I did the math I would get shocked- how have they been on this long? Tommy must be like 90 now!

Tom and Ray Magliozzi are retiring from recording Car Talk, my favorite radio show ever on NPR. In September, but they, like The Puzzler take so much time off in the Summer that there can’t be that many more shows left. I always wanted to call in and be on the show, but I never had an interesting enough question- I usually know what’s wrong with my car, and what they need are people who will humiliate themselves making car noises. And I suppose you can only tell the same answers for so many years- it’s the brake calipers, it’s the evaporative cooler, it’s your alternator brushes- before you lose your mind.

Also, people don’t work on their cars anymore. Auto makers lock everyone into service warranties, and make the systems on modern cars so computer dependent that you have to have access to expensive diagnostic equipment to trace problems. I’ll stop myself from getting on my rant about the whole warranty culture that tries to make everyone fearful of doing any maintenance or repairs themselves, but at least Click and Clack always roadblocked that particular path.

I thought it was pretty cool of the Pixar folks to include the brothers as characters in Cars (they were Lightning McQueen’s original sponsors, Rust-Eaze) and a few years ago they hosted an episode of NOVA on the car of the future. I don’t know what can fill the gap on weekend public radio for me now- I’d rather jam spark plugs in my ears than listen to Michael Feldman’s interminable show or Garrison Keillor’s nose-whistling ego fest. To me a good successor would likely be Adam Carolla on digital radio, who could extend it to all home repairs too to compensate for the loss of car questions.

I’m sure I’ll post a longer piece when the actual retirement happens this Fall. If only they could at least still do The Puzzler somewhere.