CAR TALK CLASSICS: FOUR PERFECTLY GOOD HOURS (audiobook) by Tom and Ray Magliozzi












Published by HighBridge Audio in 2007
Duration: Approximately 4 hours
The hosts of NPR's Car Talk, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, offer highlights from their radio show with the theme of motherhood. If you are not familiar with the show, well it is unique. Two brothers who aren't really mechanics (but do have a lot of experience fixing cars) take calls about cars and car repair. They laugh and mercilessly kid one another and sometimes actually get around to offering advice on how to fix a car.

 This a a 4 CD set featuring four entire hour-long episodes, which is different than many of their collections that are composed of a series of edited segments. While this is mostly highly entertaining, especially the segment with Martha Stewart (to me, Stewart can seem stuffy and stiff on her show. She rolls with these two jokesters and their enjoyable, sophomoric antics and holds her own and exhibits a quick wit) there are segments that I could only characterize as wearisome, such as the childhood letters home from summer camp from a staff member of the show, John "Bugsy" Lawlor. Thankfully, it is fairly short and the brothers get back to taking phone calls.

 The calls in this one are interesting, including an Aussie who wants the recommendation of a good car to drive in Colorado, a woman who went behind the back of her regular mechanic and took her car someone else and my favorite, the man who has a faulty dashboard indicator that keeps telling him that his engine is out of oil. The only way he can get it to stop is to pound on his dashboard, a technique that causes the brothers to nearly fall out of their chairs as they envision him driving and angrily pounding away.

 The third CD in this set is a Mother's Day tribute featuring their mother. Most if not all of this material is on another CD that I recently listened to and reviewed, CAR TALK: MATERNAL COMBUSTION. 

 I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.It can be found on Amazon.com here: Car Talk Classics: Four Perfectly Good Hours.

 Reviewed on September 1, 2013.

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