Nowadays, many west companies are endowed with project management, that mean's the evolution from a mass economy to a variety and reactivity economy. The actual trend lies in the transfer of responsabilities by car builders to car manufacturers during car development. At the moment this evolution of responsabilities concerns design trades. The object of our research is the elaboration of a method aimed to car manufacturers in order to improve their information data source in the field of style, and allowing theim to be in partnership with the car builders in offering the adjusted concepts. Our position induces to the following hypothesis : (1) car manufacturers have to acquire skills in designing parts of vehicle, (2) car manufacturers have to take position swiftly on the earliest stages of design process, (3) this action has to be in phase with design activity by car builders. To our mind, the appropriate position lies on the formalisation of information and communication processes invoved in car design. To get with this problematic, we established a model of the global styling process involved in the car development process. This model is supported by the analysis of cognitive activity of the stylists. It is a formal représentation linked with the design process and with a substantive point of view based on the sign theorie. We analyse the interaction between both of them. Then we suggest directions for awareness tools in the field of design, allowing the car manufacturers to inquire about organizational, informational, and procedural trends.