In the centre of Beijing, neon-bright against a misty night, the Feng Hua Yuan drive-in cinema appears like an apparition from 1950s America.

It is a world of jalopies and ponytails, and waitresses on roller skates – and a vision of China's future.

For China is rapidly developing a US-style cult of the automobile that could have some profound implications for Chinese society.

But the phenomenon will have huge implications too for the companies poised to make money from it, many of which were yesterday preparing to display their wares at the Beijing motor show.

Carmakers are cashing in, with sales rising 45 per cent last year, and 72 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, year on year.

But the moneymakers of the future will be the many car-wash chains and chrome-wheel cover stores that have yet to be built, and the motor inns and farm-style restaurants that have begun to spring up in the the nation's countryside.

With a highway network that could well rival that of the US within a decade – in part a fortuitous side-effect of the global financial crisis, which spurred Beijing to use stimulus cash to build toll roads – China's car culture is on the route to rapid expansion.

The first generation of Chinese car-lovers is rapidly falling in love with all that space.

“I like the speed, I like the freedom, I can't imagine not having a car,” says Hou Mingxin, 39, proud owner of a 2000 Jeep Cherokee, which he uses to drive to the wild grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and a two-door Volkswagen Golf runabout, for navigating Beijing's urban wasteland.

“It is the first time in their lives that Chinese people have individual mobility,” says Ivo Naumann, head of Alix Partners in China, which advises many leading car companies. “It's a piece of freedom for the Chinese people.”

Standing before a sign that says “Drive-In”, in neon retro letters several feet high, manager Liu Cunyu says 600 cars turn up most weekends at his theatre, and 200-300 on weekdays. He points out that attending the drive-in is fun for young lovers. The irony is that China is discovering the romance of the road just as Westerners seem to have lost it. “The younger generation in mature markets is reluctant to buy cars, especially in Europe and Japan,” says Klaus Paur, of TNS Auto in Shanghai.

“But in China, it's the younger generation that is defining the car market.”

And those youngsters want not just freedom through car ownership, but also friendship.

That fact is obvious from the traffic jam that developed last Saturday on Shanghai's A30 motorway, just past the last toll booth on the edge of the city.

Members of the World Car Friendship Club (and many of the city's other car affinity societies) were congregating to go strawberry picking – an activity that most agreed they would never have attempted without the benefits of a car. A cortege of pastel-coloured VW Beetles, driven mostly by young girls, proceeded past in stately single file, running red lights to stay in formation. Some cars were plastered with multiple club logos. Like many car club aficionados, the organiser of the World Friendship club says the most important reason for joining a club is to expand his social circle.

He once organised an outing for 100,000 car club members to eat crab in nearby Hangzhou – a feat that even US baby boomers would marvel at.

For if America's car boom took place mostly in the interstate age – the 1950s and 60s when the US interstate highway system exploded – China's car boom is very much a phenomenon of the internet age. In fact, think of it as Facebook, with automotive characteristics.

Cars are liberating China in the same way that they did America in the last century – offering a kind of freedom that even Facebook-blocking Beijing can live with.