Car Talk is a metonym for the humorous work of "Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers", Tom and Ray Magliozzi on automobile repair.

[7] Car Talk was presented in the form of a call-in radio show: listeners called in with questions related to motor vehicle maintenance and repair.

[9][10][11][12] The Car Talk theme music is "Dawggy Mountain Breakdown" by bluegrass artist David Grisman.

Although the approximately 2,000 queries received each week were screened by the Car Talk staff, the questions were unknown to the Magliozzis in advance as "that would entail researching the right answer, which is what?

The hosts gave instructions to listeners to write answers addressed to "Puzzler Tower" on some non-existent or expensive object, such as a "$26 bill" or an advanced digital SLR camera.

A running gag concerned Tom's inability to remember the previous week's "Puzzler" without heavy prompting from Ray.

For each puzzler, one correct answer was chosen at random, with the winner receiving a $26 gift certificate to the Car Talk store, referred to as the "Shameless Commerce Division".

A recurring feature was "Stump the Chumps," in which the hosts revisited a caller from a previous show to determine the accuracy and the effect, if any, of their advice.

[17] They also would sometimes rely on Harvard University professors Wolfgang Rueckner and Jim E. Davis for questions concerning physics and chemistry, respectively.

[18][19][20] There were numerous appearances from NPR personalities, including Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Scott Simon, Ray Suarez, Will Shortz, Sylvia Poggioli, and commentator and author Daniel Pinkwater.

Celebrities and public figures were featured as "callers" as well, including Geena Davis, Ashley Judd, Morley Safer, Gordon Elliott, former Major League Baseball pitcher Bill Lee, journalist Farhad Manjoo, and astronaut John M. Grunsfeld.

It was a joke call from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory concerning the preparation of the Mars Opportunity rover for the oncoming Martian winter, during which temperatures drop to several hundred degrees below freezing.

[22][23] Click and Clack have also been featured in editorial cartoons, including one where a befuddled NASA engineer called them to ask how to fix the Space Shuttle.

They also commented at the end of each show: "Well, it's happened again—you've wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk.

[25] In another episode Ray mentioned Cambridge, Massachusetts, at which point Tom reverently interjected with a tone of civic pride, "Our fair city".

[citation needed] The ending credits of the show started with thanks to the colorfully nicknamed actual staffers: producer Doug "the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, bongo boy frogman" Berman;[26] "John 'Bugsy' Lawlor, just back from the ..." every week a different eating event with rhyming foodstuff names; David "Calves of Belleville" Greene;[27] Catherine "Frau Blücher" Fenollosa, whose name caused a horse to neigh and gallop (an allusion to a running gag in the movie Young Frankenstein);[28] and Carly "High Voltage" Nix,[29] among others.

Following the real staff was a lengthy list of pun-filled fictional staffers and sponsors such as statistician Marge Innovera ("margin of error"), customer care representative Haywood Jabuzoff ("Hey, would ya buzz off"), meteorologist Claudio Vernight ("cloudy overnight"), optometric firm C. F. Eye Care ("see if I care"), Russian chauffeur Picov Andropov ("pick up and drop off"), Leo Tolstoy biographer Warren Peace ("War and Peace"), hygiene officer and chief of the Tokyo office Oteka Shawa ("oh, take a shower"), Swedish snowboard instructor Soren Derkeister ("sore in the keister"), law firm Dewey, Cheetham & Howe ("Do we cheat 'em?

"), Greek tailor Euripides Eumenades ("You rip-a these, you mend-a these"), cloakroom attendant Mahatma Coate ("My hat, my coat"), seat cushion tester Mike Easter (my keister) and many, many others, usually concluding with Erasmus B. Dragon ("Her ass must be draggin'"), whose job title varied, but who was often said to be head of the show's working mothers' support group.

(Huey, Louie, and Dewey were the juvenile nephews being raised by Donald Duck in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.)

He did so well that he was asked to return as a guest, and he invited his younger brother Ray (who was actually more of a car repair expert) to join him.

[33][34] In 1989, the brothers started a newspaper column Click and Clack Talk Cars which, like the radio show, mixed serious advice with humor.

[42] Ray Magliozzi hosted a special Car Talk memorial episode for his brother Tom after he died in November 2014.

Ray continued to have a hand in the day-to-day operations of the shop for years, while his brother Tom semi-retired, often joking on Car Talk about his distaste for doing "actual work".

[59] The play was not officially endorsed by the Magliozzis, but they participated in the production, lending their voices to a central puppet character named "The Wizard of Cahs".