It seems like a long time ago that large generalist carmakers were taking up positions in top-of-the-range vehicle markets where they would compete by acquiring great makes like Bugatti or Jaguar and/or by launching brands and models that all targeted the same customer base. Automotive headlines from the past few months seem to indicate, however, that the quest for volume has become topical again, based on the development of models that can be produced at a low cost and sold at prices that, up until two years ago, would hardly have been considered compatible with today’s quality requirements.

In addition to Renault (which has started to collaborate with Lada) Toyota and Daihatsu in India Fiat in Turkey, Volkswagen and Nissan also seem to be seriously considering the idea of developing models of this kind over the next 2/3 years. Tata re-launched plans last May to build a $2,200 vehicle in Communist West Bengal, whereas Chinese carmakers, after expressing a desire to develop their own models plus the means to export them to other markets (including mature ones), have been hiring experienced designers or executives who used to work at Rover or GM to achieve this goal. All in all, a host of indicators accredit the idea that what we are witnessing, on one hand, is a strong rise in automobile supply investments leading to a relatively sharp break with past trends towards technological sophistication, and, on the other hand, variability in relative price levels that up until recently had appeared irreversible.

In the Renault Group, the Dacia Logan is the entity driving a trend that Fiat once attempted to pursue with the Palio. From one month to the next, carmakers seem to be changing how they perceive markets and their inherent growth and profit opportunities. As indicated by the Logan experience, this re-examination concerns first and foremost the so-called emerging markets that people have discovered would probably emerge more strongly if products were offered at prices making them more accessible to a broader section of the population. This also affects mature markets featuring, as some actors have started to realise, opportunities for anyone capable of manufacturing new vehicles to be accessed by household categories that up until now have only been able to purchase used products, to such an extent that growth in the overall stock of goods has been synonymous with its ageing. In France last June for example, Cetelem, a BNP-Paribas specialist financing subsidiary, structured an 7-year automobile loan after noting that the average price for the vehicles on which it provides acquisition funding had risen by 33% between 1995 and 2005, from €14,000 to €19,000.

For GERPISA historians, sociologists, managers or economists with an interest in the automobile, these trends offer a clear incentive to focus on market-related issues, and on the way in which the tools that industrialists develop to analyse, create or exploit such issues translate into product policies and commercial practices. Long neglected because of an emphasis on analysing production and design practices, this dimension of life in the automobile industry clearly merits greater attention in future research.

This does not in any way mean that we should turn our backs on our previous foci to concentrate solely now on these issues. But as witnessed during our 14th conference, we do need to show that we are capable of renewing our research orientations even as we remain willing to work on questions that are theoretically and intellectually stimulating but cover issues and questions relevant to industrialists and the companies in whose name they act.