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In the late 1970s, the automotive repair and distribution sector came under assault from chains offering fast repair solutions based on the model of large retailers. They proposed a new way to deal with customer demand. By using the work related to the economy of qualities, we show that this attempt at market reconfiguration came up against both the intrinsic properties of the object, defined as “epistemologically obscure “(Borg, 2012), and the way tradespeople treat the customer’s needs, in other words a way that is interpretable and adjustable to particular needs (Karpik, 2007; Mallard, 2011).