Car Talk

Public radio’s Car Talk will undergo another transformation next year as its producer pulls back from offering repackaged “best of” editions of the longtime weekend staple.

NPR announced Wednesday that Best of Car Talk, which airs on 654 stations, will end production as of Sept. 30, 2017. Some stations may continue to air a version of the show, however, and it will continue as a podcast as well.

[UPDATE Sept. 28, 2017: Best of Car Talk isn’t really ending, but many stations are still dropping it in October.]

Car Talk ended production of brand-new episodes in 2012 with the retirement of iconic hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the chatty, cackling car-mechanic brothers who started the show at WBUR in Boston in 1977. They stepped away from their mics as Tom Magliozzi’s health was declining; he died in 2014 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Tom (died in 2014) and Ray Magliozzi