When I was a kid, I loved the local garage. The smell of oil, the clank of heavy metal, and the naughty Pirelli calendar were thrilling to me. The yard behind the bays was a veritable graveyard of deceased motor-car bits and pieces, with a mountainy pile of oil filters rising at its centre.

We went there once each year at least, when we had mum’s car serviced. As I got older, so did the cent-quatre, so we went more often. Then mum got a new car, and my life changed.

I thought the family visit to the dealership would be an adventure, and I was right. Packed with cars which were all different, all shiny brand new, and all somehow indoors. That day was perhaps the beginning of my petrol-head persona. But also it ended our visits to the local garage.

Theirs was nothing like the one at home. It was clean. The floors were tiled in white, as if challenging the mechanics to do their work without a smudge or droplet. No waste was visible. No fun was to be had.

It was here, rather than the local, which we would visit henceforth. My father explained. “These modern new cars are so complex, we’re better off getting the dealership to look after the servicing and any mechanical issues,” he said. “Besides,” he added, “Gus doesn’t have the right diagnostics machine.” Gustave was the mechanic at the old garage. I don’t believe his workshop contained any non-mechanical devices.

Getting the dealer to service the car makes sense for other reasons, too. As vehicles become more complex, it is more important for the repair man to understand their peculiarities. That’s easier done when you’re a specialist, because you must know only one narrow band of the entire car, truck, and van universe. At the dealership you probably have only four or five engine types to deal with, even. You need to know the tricks and hacks for only one type of vehicle, not all of them. And when you need a part, you always know where to get it, and how it fits.

I missed my regular visits to the old garage, but I hadn’t realised how often we were going until we stopped. That old 104 broke down a rather lot. And because Gus had to fix cars of many different brands from multiple eras, every issue he faced was nearly always a new one. It could take days or even weeks of trial and error figure it out. And maybe, just maybe, he was not the best mechanic in the world.

Plus, some things even the world’s best mechanic could not do. When I was underwriting motor warranty insurance, I learned that every time a dealership delivers a service or an MOT, embedded issues discovered in the global fleet are remedied, and improvements are made which go beyond replacement.

I thought of Gus when an older person on a prospective client’s systems procurement team told me that she prefers to buy-in software, then subcontract out any necessary modifications and subsequent configuration to a third-party development firm. Why, I wondered silently, would you get Gus when you can have SaaS?

SaaS, or software as a service, is the technology equivalent of the dealership. Your system or platform is regularly updated with the improvements that you need, but also with those that all the other users have suggested. If there’s a bug in the system discovered by a user in in one place, it’s fixed in all the others, too. The customer won’t even know it.

That’s not to say SaaS people don’t talk to users. They do almost constantly. Very often, users or in-house technical staff know the individuals from the software company’s support team personally. They are no more distant then someone from the IT department, at least in terms of accessibility. You are never on your own (as you are with software as a product), and you never have to rely on Gus.