The NPR show whose hosts were known as Click and Clack was Car Talk.
Click and Clack were the comic radio identities of brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, who called themselves the Tappet Brothers. On Car Talk, listeners phoned in with questions about repairs and strange vehicle noises, while the brothers mixed practical mechanical advice with jokes, wordplay, and deliberately irreverent diagnoses.
The program began locally on Boston’s WBUR-FM in 1977 and was distributed nationally by NPR beginning in 1987. Its conversational call-in format made automotive troubleshooting accessible even to people who knew little about cars. Car Talk won a Peabody Award in 1992 and became one of public radio’s best-known programs.
The Magliozzis stopped producing new episodes in 2012, but edited reruns continued for years. The show later lived on through podcast distribution and archival releases. The nickname “Click and Clack” refers to the two brothers, not to a separate NPR program or the later animated series based on their characters.