As 2007 gets underway and before meeting in June to deepen our discussions, I would like to send you, along with my best wishes, a request already formulated in last July’s Letter from Gerpisa.

I want this to be the year when the network’s scientific activity is revitalised via a new 2007-2010 programme that will spark a general (re-)mobilisation of our community of history, sociology, economics and management researchers with an interest in the automobile, its industry and uses.

At a time when a reinvigorated internationalisation trend coincides with a global demand for sustainable development (in varying forms), we should derive greater value from the resources at our disposal, for our own benefit as researchers but also for the benefit of the different parties with whom we are in contact (industrialists and union leaders but also actors in civil society and political authorities).

For this to happen, the programme ‘s definition should not be imposed by a few individuals but result instead from broad prior discussion not only amongst ourselves but also with our professional counterparts. In France, we have been trying to structure exchanges with said professionnals by organising a meeting that is supposed to run in February and which will bring in the carmaker, supplier and distributor representatives who we want to see involved in the new programme’s definition. Of course, above and beyond people’s own centres of interest and usual preoccupations, everyone can try to engage in dialogue and devise new proposals on a more or less formal basis.

The work done up until now organising this meeting has made me think that two main themes are likely to encounter widespread approval and ensure significant involvement. The first refers to the industry’s new phase of international deployment and to the affirmation of new automobile territories and actors (Eastern Europe, Brazil, Russia, India, China, Malaysia, etc.). The second concerns the forms by means of which the sustainable development constraint is going to be integrated into the public policies that are in the process of being defined in the world’s different countries or regions (and in firms’ technological, industrial, wage-related and social practices).

No final decision has been made and there is every reason to believe that these two themes can be crossed. It remains that a theme is not the same thing as a research programme. Moreover, a host of scientific questions are as yet undeveloped. I hope that this new call for contributions will receive, at the dawn of this new year, the reception it deserves, and that there will be a proliferation of proposals which we can then try to disseminate through the appropriate vehicle (Letter from Gerpisa, blog, etc.).

Thanks to each and every one of you and again, best wishes for 2007.