Tom Magliozzi

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Tom Magliozzi during a session of Car Talk

Thomas Louis Magliozzi is the older brother (to Ray) of Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers (Tom is Click), the hosts of National Public Radio's Car Talk.

Tom was born in East Cambridge, Massachusetts where he has lived - and plans to live - all of his life. He attended Gannett School, Wellington School, Cambridge High and Latin School, and then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (class of 1958) and Air Force ROTC, after which he spent six months in the Army Reserve in Fort Dix, New Jersey (India Company, Fourth Training Regiment).

Upon graduation, he worked for Sylvania's Semiconductor Division in Woburn and then for the Foxboro Company while simultaneously earning his MBA from the Boston University Graduate School of Management and teaching part-time at area universities. He eventually became sick of his commute (and job) and quit, spending the next year doing odd jobs such as painting for other tenants in his apartment building.

Tom's brother Ray left his job in Vermont in 1973 and came to Cambridge, at which point the two opened a do-it-yourself repair shop, named Hacker's Haven. The shop, which rented space and equipment to "hackers" trying to fix their own cars, wasn't profitable, but the two had fun and were invited in 1977 to be part of a panel of automotive experts on Boston's NPR affiliate WBUR. Only Tom showed up, and took over the show. Meanwhile, the shop turned into a standard auto-repair shop named Good News Garage.

Besides the radio show, Tom also worked a day or two per week at the Technology Consulting Group in Boston, run by a former MIT classmate, and still taught at local universities. Tom felt that college professors made lots of money without working, so he spent nine years working while getting his doctorate in marketing. After being a professor for eight years he decided he disliked teaching and quit. In January of 1987, then-host Susan Stamberg of Weekend Edition on NPR asked the two to contribute weekly to her program. Nine months later, Car Talk premiered as an independent NPR program.

Tom now does the weekly Car Talk radio show with Ray, writes for the CarTalk.com, and runs his own consulting business. Tom also appeared in the Pixar film Cars with his brother Ray. They played the Rust-eze owners who discovered Lighting McQueen and gave him his first big break. Tom appeared as a 1963 Dodge Dart convertible. This was an in-joke, as Tom owned a '63 Dart convertible for many years and often mentioned it on Car Talk.

[edit] References

Magliozzi, Tom and Ray. In Our Humble Opinion: Car Talk's Click and Clack Rant and Rave. New York: Perigree Books, 2000.
MIT Alumni Interview with Tom
Tom's Biography at Cartalk.com (identical to chapter "Tom's Life Thus Far" in "In Our Humble Opinion: Car Talk's Click and Clack Rant and Rave") -- includes pictures
NPR Biography of Tom and Ray Magliozzi