Tom Magliozzi, who helped Americans around the country with their car problems on NPR’s beloved Car Talk with brother Ray, has died. He was 77 years old.
Tom’s death comes just over two years after the two announced their retirement in June 2012. Since then, the show has continued to air and make drivers laugh.
The show announced that Tom died on Monday after complications from Alzheimer’s Disease. “Turns out he wasn’t kidding,” Ray joked. “He really couldn’t remember last week’s puzzler.”
Tom was born in June 1937 in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he and his brother Ray picked up that self-deprecating humor that lived on the air. He was the first member of his family to go to college, earning a Chemical Engineering degree from MIT. After a near traffic accident, he decided that he needed a job that wasn’t 9-to-5.
Car Talk actually started by mistake. Boston’s local public radio station, WBUR, was going to have a panel of car mechanics, but Tom was the only one who made it. He was still asked the next week, when Ray came along. Thus Car Talk was born and ran for another 37 years. After its first 10 years, the show went nationwide.
Ray asked that instead of flowers or rotten fish, fans make a donation to their local public radio station or to the Alzheimer’s Association.
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