Between Globalization and Regionalization: What is the Future of the Automobile Industry?

Introduction: If the challenge facing automobile producers in the 1980s was how to change theirindustrial model, that of the 1990s has been how to reorganize internationally. Ofcourse, internationalization has been one of the industry's characteristics since itsinception, and international trade has accounted for a higher proportion of sales thanit does today at several periods in the past (Bardou, Chanaron, Fridenson and Laux,1982). Globalization has neither been achieved nor is it irreversible and unavoidable.Yet the current tendency towards internationalization differs from previous phases,and in particular, it differs from the situation in the 1970s and 1980s analyzed byGERPISA in one of its initial research projects (Gerpisa, 1984). In part, this is due tothe global context of deregulation and the emergence of new growth poles, but aboveall because of its origins. The clash between the industrial models used by companiesand between national growth models seen over the last twenty years has destabilizedthe wage-labour nexus and, in turn, the markets of many mature countries, includingcountries that have benefited from this confrontation. Companies can no longer relyupon markets that are relatively predictable in terms of the level and type of demand....