August 6, 2025 by Glenn Mangurian
With all the turmoil in the world, I thought a little comic relief is in order. Many of you might have been avid Car Talk listeners. Car Talk ran for 25 years locally on WBUR and nationally on NPR. You can still find the “Best of Car Talk” wherever you get your podcasts. Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka the Tappet Brothers) were my featured guests in 2007 at my “Uncommon Leadership” breakfast attended by 120 guests – friends and UMass alums.
Ray and I graduated from Arlington High School and were close friends. Back then we had assigned seats in alphabetical order. Ray sat in front of me in most all my classes. In the science classes I would sneak a peek over Ray’s shoulder during tests. Unfortunately, Ray would shift his seat position. He was no help. In spite of that we’ve remained friends for over 60 years. This is an edited version of my conversation Tom and Ray. Get ready to laugh.
Glenn M.: Tom and Ray, welcome. By the way who drove today?
Tom: He did.
Ray: Neither one of us actually drove today. Glenn, you’re paying for the cab ride – both ways.
Glenn M: When did you guys get interested in cars?
Tom: That’s a good question. I don’t think we’re interested yet.
Ray: I got interested because … Tom’s my older brother…
Tom: Older, wiser and more handsome.
Ray: Tom always had a car. He had a car obviously before I was even close to driving age. He was always tinkering. Every car he ever bought was a jalopy.
Tom: I have had some beautiful cars, though. Of all the cars I’ve had, the one I loved the most was my 63 Dodge Dart convertible. That was a great car.
Ray: No, on it’s best day, it was never a great car. And, the good news was, as pieces fell off, there was less to go wrong. It finally got to the point where the car had, like, seven moving parts.
Tom: And, none of them was in the engine!
Glenn M: I would assume because of your interest in cars, that you would both be mechanical engineers at MIT, is that right?
Tom: Chemical engineer here.
Ray: I started off as a mechanical engineer and I quickly abandoned it. I could see myself designing windshield wiper linkages. I ended up majoring in humanities and science. MIT has a fabulous humanities department.
Tom: Well, if you ever want to get out of MIT whole, you have to do something like that. Ray’s got a T-shirt, and it says, MIT Class of ’70. Scratched out. Class of ’71, scratched out. Class of ’72 …
Glenn M: Tom, did you practice your chemical engineering?
Tom: I was a chemical engineer at Foxboro Company. It was a long, long haul from Cambridge to Foxboro. I quit that job after a few months.
Ray: After Tom left the Foxboro Company, he decided he wanted to go back and earn a PhD. Took him 22½ years, but that’s another story. He got his PhD. He was teaching at Boston University, and then he moved to Suffolk. Then, he quit that job. Do you see a pattern here?
Tom: Let me tell you something about being unemployed: you learn how inexpensive it is to really live. Unemployed, I had nothing to do. I would meander down to Harvard Square and go to Grendel’s Den. For two bucks they had a brunch – all you can eat. It went from 11:00 to 2:00. I would be there at 11:00 right on time every day to have breakfast. Then, I would sit there, smoking my cigar and reading a book. And at quarter of two, I would have lunch. For two dollars a day I was taking care of two meals and five hours! It was unbelievable.
Glenn M.: How did you get started as garage owners?
Tom: He forced me into it. I came up with the idea of a do-it-yourself auto-repair shop, where people would rent space, and we would give them advice and the tools, and they would fix their own cars. I made the mistake of mentioning it to my brother. He said, “That’s a great idea. Let’s do it!” I said, “No, that would be w-w-w-work.”
Tom: I put him off for months, and somehow he just kept at me, “Let’s do it, let’s …”
Ray: I’ll tell you exactly why. My wife and I were living in Vermont. Living the good life; I was teaching school; we were growing radishes in the back yard. Everything was wonderful. Mom called, like every week, as you’d expect. If I didn’t call her, she’d call me. She would say: “Your brother quit his job at Foxboro and Suffolk.” Yeah, I know Mom. “I’m really worried about him.” I know, Mom. “He’s becoming a bum.” I know, Mom.
So, I came back to rescue my brother because our mother felt that he was sinking down into this abyss, a life of dissipation and worthlessness –
Tom: And she was right!
Ray: So, that’s how it came to pass that we opened the shop. The original garage was called Hacker’s Haven but it had some problems.
Glenn M.: Problems? Did the “do-it-yourself” concept not catch on?
Ray: Oh, it caught on. I thought that I would be able to jump on and ride his coattails to riches. We thought that our biggest challenge would be getting wheelbarrows big enough to load all the money for the trip to the bank. We envisioned ourselves standing there in pristine white lab coats, giving occasional advice.
Tom: “Hey, turn that wrench a little to the right.”
Ray: Our vision couldn’t have been farther from what happened. We had every moron, idiot, screw-up imaginable who came into our shop and expected that they would take the cars apart, have a pile of a thousand pieces and then say, “duh … I can’t put it together. Can you do it?” So we realized quickly that plan wasn’t going to work. At least it wasn’t going to work with us doing all the work.
Glenn M.: I understand you’ve been in radio for 30 years. How did the radio show get started?
Tom: We got a phone call from someone from radio station WBUR. We were struggling with the do-it-yourself thing. We were spending a lot of money on advertising, because who had ever heard of a do-it-yourself garage? No one!
Anyway, whoever called said, “We’re doing a show next Saturday about cars. We’re going to invite six mechanics to come and talk about cars. Can one of you guys come?” So, I jumped right on that, because that was an opportunity to not go to work! My stupid brother said, “don’t want to go.” So he worked, and I went to the radio station.
Of the six mechanics they had invited, the only one who showed up was me. So I was a panel of one. We talked about cars for 10 or 15 minutes, and there was a guy from the station with me. What was his name?
Ray: Vic Wheatman.
Tom: After 15 minutes, I turned to Vic, “I’ve said everything I can say. Is there any chance we can take phone calls? Maybe I can answer some questions.” He said, “I think we can do it.” We gave out the number, and the phone rang off the hook. He said, “That was great. Can you come back next week?” I asked, “Can I bring my dipshit brother?”
Ray: I didn’t know you had another brother! What a surprise.
Tom: And that’s it.
Ray: That’s not the end of the story. So Tom invited me to go back to the station the following week. I said, “Ehhh, I don’t want to do it. I don’t know anything about radio.” We thought this Vic Wheatman fellow was going to be the host and do all the intros and out-tros and all that radio stuff. It turned out that Vic Wheatman, in the intervening six days, had gotten fired. He was left a note encouraging us to do a good job – and to try to watch our language …
Tom: … which I guess, I didn’t do the week before!
Ray: We didn’t know what to call the show. There was a show that was on just before us called Shop Talk. So, we figured we’d call our show, what? Car Talk. We started doing the show, and thank God, people called in. Without those phone calls, I think we would have lasted about another week, and that would have been it.
Tom: You know, our faces were made for radio!
Glenn M.: Twenty years on NPR, and how many listeners do you have?
Ray: Well, somewhere around 4½ to 5 million.
Tom: You wouldn’t think there were that many stupid people!
Glenn M.: Do you produce the show?
Ray: Yes, we own a production company – Dewey, Cheetham and Howe. We stole the name from the Three Stooges. Our office is right in Harvard Square.
Tom: It’s a law firm.
Ray: We decided to hire someone to put the gold-leaf lettering on the glass window, because that looks really professional. On move-in day Tom, Doug Berman, our producer, and I were waiting for our office furniture to arrive. All we had was a card table and three folding chairs. We were having our weekly meeting when there was a knock on the door. It’s a young guy and a girl.
The fellow sticks his head in and says, “Excuse me. I saw your sign from down the street. What do you all do here?” And Tom says, “We’re attorneys.” I said, “I’m Mr. Dewey, this is Mr. Cheetham,” and I pointed to Doug and said, “That’s Mr. Howe.”
And the guy says, “Oh, really, you’re attorneys. What kind of law do you do?”
“We do everything – accidents, divorces, real-estate, you name it; acquisitions and mergers; we do everything.”
He says, “Oh really? Do you know there’s a joke in your name? You don’t get it? Dewey, Cheetham and Howe. You don’t get the joke?”
We look at each other, quizzically, “Nope, nope, nope. We were gonna call it Howe, Cheetham and Dewey, but Dewey, Cheetham and Howe seemed to flow better.” He says, “Ohhh.” And as he’s closing the door, we could hear him say to his girlfriend, “What a bunch of dopes!”
Glenn M.: Years back I remember seeing you on The Tonight Show.
Ray: We did Carson, Letterman, 60 Minutes, 20/20.
Glenn M.: You’re rock stars. You even sell hats and other Car Talk merchandise on your Web site.
Ray: We do. We’re cleanin’ up Glenn!
Glenn M: For each of these interviews, I have a general sense of where I want to start the conversation, where I want to end it. Instead, I’m going to ask you to sing a song.
Ray: Really? Do we have musical accompaniment, or is this a cappella?
Glenn M.: We’ll have some musical accompaniment. Are you guys ready?
Tom: How the hell do we know?
Ray: This is the “embarrass the guest” portion of the program.
Ray and Tom: (Sung to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”)
Listen to Tom and Ray Sing
Take me out for some car talk,
Take me out for some laughs,
I need a Lexus or Cadillac
We don’t care if we ever get back
It’s toot, toot, toot right down Mass Ave.
Dewey, Cheetham and Howe
For it’s Tom, Ray, all of the guys
Cheering Go U Mass
I knew Tom and Ray from meeting them at a young car designers workshop at the Museum of Transportation
in Brookline. There were nine of us who were the jurors for the event. Much fun and hilarity was had by all.
Tom and Ray were late so when they arrived I asked them -Did your car break down? I don’t remember if they laughed , but everyone else did.
We had a sit down luncheon in the office of then director Shari West. We had more laughs and Tom actually took a napsfor a while,
something his brother always joked about him doing on the show.
I got to know them casually, or as they might have said Unfortunately. They usually acknowledged knowing me on various occasions.
Two Wonderfull entertaining and creative people that I was fortunate to have had contact with!!