I am taking a survey: Other than Tom and Ray - who is the absolute funniest car mechanic personality you have ever met? I am beginning a “funniest mechanic in…” contest and would love a couple of tips to get started in my quest to find the funniest mechanic in America. I’ve also left this message for the Car Talk staff, but I suspect there are some doozies out there…
Even Tom and Ray have acknowledged that their on air humor is not always shared by their customers at work. When your only mode of transportation and the second biggest investment you may ever make, is in need of a repair. And, you can expect a bill north of the several mortgage payments , humor is the last thing you may want from the guy who presents you with the bill. Fortunately, unless a mechanic has his own show, most mechanics I’ve dealt with kept that in mind. Stand up at work doesn’t seem to work for the ones I have known.
Jay Leno
There are none.
After a lot of thought and having known a lot of mechanics over the decades I can only think of one who was somewhat funny and with him humor wasn’t intended.
Actually, I was getting a little tired of their slap stick. They’re nice guys and all but really, not truly funny-just laugh a lot.
A funny mechanic at work would be the same as a funny mortician at a funeral or doctor in the ER… No one wants to laugh when they hear their car is “sick” or near dieing
The Queen of England has a great sense of humor. She was a mechanic in the Motor Pool of the British Army in WWII.
Like ok4450, the only ones I recall as being funny were unaware of how they were making people laugh.
One crusty old guy used to tell customers that they had a problem with, “Mersture in da muffla”. He was also fond of replacing “sellenoids” and frequently recommended using “Karosene” to clean engines.
He also prided himself on checking everyone’s “earl”, and cleaning all of the “corrode” from people’s batteries.
I once heard him diagnose a problem with somebody’s “parking prawl”.
Customer’s cassete player is not playing.
After flunking the bench test, tech takes out a gospel tape and inserts his Van Halen tape.
– tape player works gangbusters 
returning the working unit to the customer, Van Halen now blasting in her car, she asks for the reason the tape player wouldn’t work.
Straight face and dead-pan the tech tells her…"Wrong kind of music ma’am. " and quietly walks away as if that’s the final word.
— She wrinkles her brow and replies …“wow…I never knew that could happen.”
This is the same guy that will tell customers their vehicle malfunctiond due to the chicken bones under the seat, the red mud instead of brown , the wrong kind of hay in the bed etc.
And he has all kinds of little techno-speak that makes it sound like that’s the problem.
( I later told the tape player lady that her gospel cassete had become sticky from something spilled on it and we had a good laugh about the ‘‘wrong kind of music’’.)
I once heard an explanation of why a guys radio wouldn’t play any country music stations because the kicking diode was shorted to ground.
On second thought the funniest mechanics were Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp. I am ashamed to say I forgot what episodes featured them working on cars.
‘Pardon my backfire’ was one that I found on youtube. Apparently it was a 3d “movie” at the time
@bscar2
Very good! That is a great one.