Sputtering Ahead

Tom and Ray Magliozzi like to joke that they have faces for radio. Now you'll get to judge for yourself. The hosts of NPR's wildly successful "Car Talk"—better known to many of their 4 million weekly listeners as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers—will be making their small-screen debut in "Car of the Future," an Earth Day episode of "Nova" on PBS. Then, in July, PBS will begin airing "As the Wrench Turns," an animated series loosely based on the lives of the brothers and the off-the-cuff banter that has been the hallmark of their show for more than three decades.

In "Car of the Future" Ray decides it's time for Tom to junk his sputtering 1952 MG Roadster. Armed with alarming statistics—that a quarter of the oil ever consumed was pumped in the last decade; that placed bumper to bumper, the earth's 800 million cars would circle the planet 100 times—they go in search of a suitable replacement. The brothers crack wise at the Detroit Auto Show and the corollary underground AltWheels festival in Boston. They ride, and help refuel, a hydrogen-powered bus in Iceland. They visit automotive engineers at universities and think tanks, all in the interest of finding something—anything—that might help Americans break free from Big Oil's tight grip. If the underlying message is grim, Click and Clack provide a dose of humor, curiosity and good nature. It's essential if inconvenient viewing (apologies to Al Gore).

NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker and Arlyn Tobias Gajilan recently spoke with Tom and Ray Magliozzi after the "Nova" and PBS shows were announced at a press briefing in New York. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: When you were growing up, what was your vision of the car of the future?
Ray Magliozzi: I was a real nerd growing up. I read Popular Science and Scientific American. And I was ticked off because those bums promised that within 30 years you could safely drive the car of the future with no hands or feet, and that you could watch television and interact with your kids. It's been a lot more than 30 years since I read that, and not much of that has happened. Your kids can watch a DVD, but you still have to drive the car yourself.

What did you see, in the course of filming the special, that excited you the most?
Tom Magliozzi: Nothing. There was nothing quite different, and it was just more of the same stuff that we had all heard about. We didn't believe that any of it is going to turn into the car of the future.

So there is no car of the future?
Tom: Oh, there is, but we don't know what it is.
Ray: I don't think that Dean Kamen is going to announce tomorrow that he's got the car of the future.