DRIVE SMALL.(Brief Article)

In an unusual spurt of semi-seriousness, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (a.k.a. Click and Clack), the wisecracking brothers and M.I.T.-educated auto mechanics who are the hosts of the radio show "Car Talk," decided recently to launch a political crusade of sorts, against sport-utility vehicles. "Car Talk," which airs on National Public Radio but is owned and produced by the Magliozzis, provides an impressive pulpit. It is the most popular entertainment show on public radio, heard, on average, by 3.7 million listeners around the country each weekend. "We're hoping to have an effect on the market," one of the brothers (it was impossible to distinguish which) said over the phone last week, in a rare tandem interview. They both guffawed, as they often do. "We have no effect on anything," the other said.

To amplify their message, the Magliozzis teamed up with Stonyfield Farm yogurt, an environmentally active "acidophilus conglomerate" (as they put it, in their thick Boston accents). Together, the two brothers and the yogurt people came up with a suitably nonconfrontational motto, "Live Larger, Drive Smaller," which was to appear on bumper stickers and on Stonyfield yogurt-container lids. There was a problem, however: along with "Car Talk," the lids cited NPR, leaving the impression that the ostensibly politically neutral news organization was involved in a controversial advocacy campaign.

Jenny Lawhorn, an NPR spokeswoman, says that when "Car Talk" proposed the idea she didn't see any problem. "At first, I said, 'Oh, that sounds interesting.' " Stonyfield went ahead and printed up 3.1 million anti-S.U.V. yogurt lids. "But then our legal department said, 'You have to cease printing!' The 'Car Talk' guys can do whatever the heck they want--they have editorial control over their show. But using NPR's name isn't something they're free to do.' It's ironic that this whole environmental thing ends up producing several million useless plastic yogurt lids." (Gary Hirshberg, the C.E.O. of Stonyfield, promised that he'd recycle the lids, into "toothbrushes and bird feeders." The Magliozzis, for their part, announced a competition among listeners to devise an alternative use for the lids. Early suggestions included plugging the hole in the ozone layer and stringing up a beaded curtain on the ...