The aim of this paper is to present a comparative analysis of the Plateforme de la Filière Automobile and The British Automotive Council. The two operating structure were established respectively in France and UK to support the national automotive sectors at the dawn of the ongoing crisis. The Italian government is on the way to set up a similar structure. These operating structures can be defined as two instruments of industrial policy introduced in parallel to the classical industrial policy measures allowed by the European Union and that in some ways represent a turning point of the mode of state intervention in the real economy. The challenge is to force different actors to cooperate, not only central government and industry, but more deeply different local authorities and different automotive tiers. In so far as the roles of the different actors are balanced, dissimilar configurations of Triple Helix can be detected and, as a consequence, different evaluations can be deduced.