The 'Car Talk' Guys Are Retiring, But The Show Goes On


Here's the story: With Tom turning 75 this year, and the show celebrating its 25th year on NPR, the boys recently took a long look at their lives, their legacies, and their desires for the future. The conversation went something like this:

TOM: Hey, guess what? I'm retiring.

RAY: If you retired, how would you know?

Perhaps you feel as we do; a touch of sadness, along with incredible gratitude for the humor and humanity the boys have shared so openly with us every week.

If you'd like to share your thoughts about Car Talk with Tom and Ray and other listeners, we invite you to post them here, where the guys will no doubt browse in the coming days.

The good news is that we actually remembered to tape all of their shows! So we have 25 years worth of amazing calls, puzzlers and laughs. It's stuff that's making us laugh very hard these days here at Car Talk Plaza (and not just because we got away with putting it on NPR). We know you’re going to love hearing it, too.

So beginning in October of this year, we're going to share the best of our 25 years with you. Tom and Ray did more than 1,200 shows. We'll find the funniest stuff within them and NPR will continue to give you a great dose of Car Talk to start off every weekend.

And the guys will still be around, writing their Dear Tom and Ray column twice a week, putting their feet in our mouths in surprising new ways on the web site and Facebook, and overseeing the continuing Car Talk series that'll be built from their archives.

Let me quote the boys themselves, with what they said to their listeners the other day when making their announcement: "Thank you for giving us far more of your time than we ever deserved. We love you. And know that starting this fall, for the first time, we'll be able to sit at home, laughing at Car Talk along with you guys on Saturday mornings."

Talk to you then.

Doug Berman
Esteemed Producer

• Read more from Tom and Ray at CarTalk.com