Tom Magliozzi, host of NPR's Car Talk, is dead at 77

Tom Magliozzi, host of NPR&#039;s Car Talk, is dead at 77

(Image credit: Facebook.com/CarTalk)

last updated 8 January 2015

Tom Magliozzi, who hosted the weekly NPR show Car Talk with his brother (pictured, left), Ray, died on Monday after experiencing "complications from Alzheimer's disease," NPR reports.

The Magliozzi brothers, a.k.a. "Click and clack the Tappet Brothers," told jokes on the show, while providing advice to listeners with car troubles. But "if there was one thing that defined Tom Magliozzi, it was his laugh," NPR's Lynn Neary noted. "It was loud, it was constant, it was infectious."

In the early 1970s, the Magliozzis opened a do-it-yourself car repair shop, followed by a more traditional car repair business. Both brothers graduated from MIT, and Tom, who was 12 years older than Ray, earned a doctoral degree in marketing. After their local public radio station asked the Magliozzis to join a panel of car mechanics for a talk show, which Tom did, the duo eventually got their own radio show. Car Talk went national in 1987.