I’ve loved cars as far back as I can remember. There are any number of photos of me, as a child, sleeping with a number of cars and trucks around me.
It’s this love that took me to General Motors — where I had one of the best jobs of my career!
It’s this love that also attracted me to Click ‘n Clack, the Tappet Brothers when I discovered NPR in the late ’80s. While the roaring laughter, the poor jokes, the riddles and the banter between themselves and with their callers certainly got my attention, what really stood out was their ability to diagnose the specifics of their caller’s problem. They’d remind me of a good GP (General Practitioner in India; Family Medicine Doctor in the US), who would ask a bunch of apparently uncorrelated questions and then, suddenly, pronounce the patient ill with a particular and rare type of bacteria — all without having run a single test. It’s that innate sense of the car coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the bazillion cars out there, that really set them alongside the Olympic Gods.
I loved the show so much that I got my kids hooked on it. It’s the accepted protocol that Click ‘n Clack is the default radio program if we are driving to a soccer game on a Saturday morning. Nothing more and nothing less.
It’s no surprise that Pooja, Chirag, and I were heartbroken to learn of Tom Magliozzi’s (apparently pronounced ”Mawl-yaht-zee”) passing. We felt like we had lost a friend, one we’d regularly “talk” to.
Tom, thanks for the many fun sessions! We will all tune into the special, remembrance Car Talk show at 1000am this Saturday.
