Chongqing’s mountainous, cyberpunk panoramas and sticky summer heat seem worlds away from flat and dry Detroit. But carmakers in the Chinese metropolis cannot stop drawing parallels with the American city. Standing outside one of Chongqing’s sprawling car-assembly plants, a boss at Changan, a state-owned auto giant, notes with pleasure that the sheer number of cars being produced in the city—some 2.5m last year—has earned it the moniker “Motown of China”.