Most of us have had the displeasure of walking up to our car to find an industrial-sized, avian ordinance splattered across the door handle and into places we'll never get it completely out of, but only a select few of us has asked, "Does it have to be so?" This and other non-ornithological investigations on today's Best of Car Talk.

Katherine from Maine occasionally drives her Ford Festiva all the way to New Mexico for fun. The boys try to take her brake trouble seriously, nonetheless. Ditto Keith from Montana who swears that his Plymouth Horizon is trying to electrocute him, and Consuelo from Texas who wants us to believe that her Mercedes won't stay still after she parks it. All this and more on today's show!

Elizabeth loves her VW Golf so much that she named it 'Miss Gilda'. Rather than love her back, 'Miss Gilda's' fusebox decided to burst into flames on a trip down the highway and ol' Gilda hasn't been right since. Is the problem the dealer who hasn't fixed the car after repeated attempts? Or does Elizabeth need to rename 'Miss Gilda' 'Chucky' and perform some sort of 'auto-exorcism'? This and more on today's Best of Car Talk.

Like a lot of middle-aged drivers, John from North Carolina wanted to cut loose and buy a cool car. But instead of reaching back to his youth for a 1960s muscle car he decided to settle for his idea of a contemporary mid-life crisis mobile: a Hyundai. How's that, John? This and more on today's Best of Car Talk!

Any old car salesman can talk a young and enthusiastic car buyer into an appropriate new vehicle. It takes a special skill set -honed by many trips to one's divorce attorney- to help the soon-to-be-unwed find the right car with which to reenter singledom. Hear Tom, the master, along with his unwilling apprentice Ray, at work on today's show.

To add excitement to the annual Car Talk Sock Hop listener party held at the Good News Garage, Tom and Ray run a contest that promises free airfare and accomodations to one lucky entrant. Pretty exciting, huh?! Well, not nearly as exciting as our two bozos trying to pick the contest winner out of the trunk of Tommy's '63 Dodge Dartre. Go figure!

Susan fr Florida has to put her beloved 1960 Austin Healey 'Bugeye' Sprite into storage for 3 years. According to Click and Clack there are two schools of thought on how to put a car into storage properly: The right way and my knucklehead brother's way. Will Susan get useful advice? Possibly. Will you be entertained? Probably.

Back 'in the day' Click and Clack observed that there were many species of peculiar drivers around their 'fair city'. Older men wearing hats were feared only slightly less than young women named Donna who zipped along in their Firebirds or Camaros without a care or a turn signal. Today the boys meet a conscientious, Datsun-driving ,Philadelphian Donna who is pretty sure that her mechanic is soaking her for a second round of major engine work. Can they talk her into junking this car in favor of the new Z28, or do they have a new subspecies of Donna on their hands?

Suzanne from San Diego always downshifts when coming to a traffic stop. Her husband David coasts in neutral with his foot on the brake. Will Tom and Ray declare one of them to be right and thus doom this marriage? Listen to today's show and find out.

On a recent show, the boys had to figure out what could possibly be the source of a car noise that went 'Oinga, Boinga, Boinga'. No sooner do listeners leap to their aid with the answer than they are then confronted once again with an odd and perplexing car noise courteousy of Karen fr CO. They also help Dayton fr AZ and Matt fr AL realize that speedometers and temperature gauges are helpful but hardly necessary auto accoutrements