The western media are often aghast at the consumption power of the emerging middle class from China, but few ponder: what does it mean to be urban middle class in contemporary China? In a country where the language of class and class struggle had once permeated political and social life, class is not only an analytical concept in social theories for scholarly debates; it is also about a series of labels for categorization and distinction in ordinary people’s mundane lives. This study aims at in-depth understanding of the making of urban middle class through their engagement of auto-oriented mobility, a material medium that allows the urban middle-class residents to articulate and perform their class identity in concrete terms. From selling and buying cars to driving and parking the cars, this ethnographic account investigates car-oriented mobility as a way to contextualize the making of middle class in workplaces, at home and in public places. Despite the lack of a civil society, intriguingly, just like their western counterparts, the Chinese urban middle class still plays an important role in the reproduction of political legitimacy and the reconfiguration of social ethos in the backdrop of the intricate interplay of the state and the market in contemporary China.