I know what you’re thinking: motoring hacks get paid too much. What other credible reason could there be for one of their number (me) supporting a rise from £54.85 to £95 – or 72.7% – in the price of a standard annual MOT car test. 

This dramatic move is about to be proposed in all seriousness by the Independent Garage Association when it holds talks with the government aimed at lifting the current MOT test price cap. I reckon it’s not just a thoroughly good idea: it’s long overdue.

There are many good reasons, but two stand out. First, the current test price has been in place since 2010. Twenty-ten! Which of us in other walks of life would tolerate doing something without a price rise for 16 years? Seasoned British MOT testers must have '£54.85' engraved on the insides of their skulls. 

Second and most important, many of the small garages of this world are far less solvent than they used to be. MOT testing stations disappear with regularity because their proprietors can’t afford to stay in business. And if you consider – as industry stats show – that of the UK’s 35 million cars in regular use, 85% are more than three years old and thus need annual testing, it’s easy to see why we need healthy test stations, preferably staffed by contented, even-handed testers.

Further arithmetic shows that every year, 29.75 million cars, between three and 39 years old, need testing. Assuming testers don’t work Sundays, around 95,000 MOT tests are needed in this country every single day. It’s a serious business.

But there’s much more to this than statistics. It is inside the independent garages of Britain that most of our practical car knowledge reposes. It’s also where lifelong car enthusiasm burns brightest. I’m not knocking big-note dealerships; most are professional and ethical. They’re needed too. But as their Taj Mahal estates show, they’re often more motivated by a love of money than a love of cars.

Everyone has a small garage story, but here are a couple of mine. When I was young, working in the far north of Australia, I was offered my first job interview as a motoring journalist. This entailed an 1800-mile drive in my old Merc, broken beyond my means to repair it. There was one mechanic in town, Tom Brown by name, who said he’d fix it as long as I sent him the cash “when you can”. He also made sure I had £100 “to pay for the petrol south”. It took me five months to pay him back – and when we met again and I pressed the notes into his hand, he smiled so widely you’d have reckoned it was me doing the favour.

Much more recently, I enjoyed a continuing soap opera starring a master mechanic near Farnborough that our little community knew as Gerry the Genius. He was forever getting difficult cars back on the roads, casually discovering, for instance, that a super-expensive starter motor for an Alfa Romeo could actually be sourced at £20 from a crashed Vauxhall; that kind of thing.

Gerry was a genius with wiring too, having been involved further back in his career with intricate, secret work for a nearby defence supplier. He was amazingly dextrous; locals who couldn’t get a new headlight bulb to fit (many are impossible these days) would bring it for Gerry to sort with a twist of the wrist. Any cost? Nah.

His finest hour – that I saw, at least – was the repair of a well-used but much loved Audi. The car had been rear-ended at low speed by a tractor, and the damage to its tailgate and driver’s side rear pillar was horrible. The owner knew that telling his insurers wouldn’t work. They’d write it off over the phone. Gerry set to work, finding a new tailgate on eBay, drilling holes in the damaged pillar, adapting jacks as pullers, thinking and banging and beating and filing. And filling too, but not too much of that. He hated filler. All the time the banter continued, as it always does in these places, with Gerry’s amazing hands refusing to be distracted by the jokes.

In a few days, the Audi was done, including perfect painting, which Gerry seemed able to pull off behind a few sheets of plastic in his old barn without needing all the modern gubbins. History doesn't record the cost, but it won’t have been as much as £1000.

All of which is why I believe in these people, and thoroughly support anything that helps them stay in business.

As it turns out, I’ve got a test booked for a motorbike tomorrow at 7.30am. The tester, another sole trader and one of God’s good men, happened to hear that I was under time pressure so he offered what he calls “an emergency appointment”. He’ll be no pushover as a tester but I know that if the chain needs lube or one of the hydraulic reservoirs looks a bit low, he’ll sort it as he goes. It will be fine. So here’s to next time. And I hope it costs more.