At Altdeutsche Bierstube, the oldest bar in Wolfsburg, a customer pondered whether Volkswagen’s home town would go the way of Michigan’s Flint — the birthplace of General Motors, once known as “Vehicle City”.

In the mid-1980s GM announced it could no longer competitively build cars in Flint as it struggled with sliding sales and the rise of low-cost Asian rivals. It whittled down its operations in the city, which like others in the US rust belt hit by industrial decline, went from one financial crisis to the next and became known as one of the country’s most dangerous cities.

Financial Times