Most days Leng Feng is a mild-mannered marketing consultant. But by Friday he's ready to rev up his trusty Citroën and answer the call of the open road.

Leng - as he's known in his auto club - will tackle some 4,200 miles to Xinjiang on a 40-day trip with his auto club next month. Like a burgeoning number of enthusiasts, they go on overnight outings and, of course, talk fondly about their vehicles. "The controls in my car are kind of fancy," he says, citing a priority for buyers here that trumps horsepower and size. "I believe in the romance of the French."

The car has long been a potent symbol of "having arrived," packing a triple threat of purchasing power, style, and convenience. And, not surprisingly, it holds special allure in a country where until recently the bicycle was king and mobility was limited. That blossoming love affair with wheels is likely to make China the largest car market in the world within about a decade.

Buoyed by a vibrant economy, easier credit, and improving roads, consumers are snapping up autos in unprecedented numbers - clogging urban streets and exacerbating pollution in the process. But they're also driving a social shift founded on that most capitalist of desires: the freedom to go where you want, when you want.

"New wealth in China has generated new ways of displaying status," says Alan Wachman, a China specialist at Tufts University's Fletcher School in Medford, Mass. "The auto offers buyers mobility and status that most Americans now take for granted."

In car terms, life really began in China around the millennium. Some 1.2 million cars rolled off the lots in 2002, a spike in demand of 30 to 40 percent. That figure jumped 70 percent in 2003, to about 2 million. Last year, Chinese bought 2.4 million cars, according to official figures, and growth is expected to be about 15 percent this year, with 10 percent becoming the annual norm by 2015.

It's a dramatic change for a country that in 1985 produced just 5,200 passenger cars. Forced to import more cars as demand grew, China has shifted gears, signing a flurry of joint venture agreements with makers like now-defunct American Motors Corp., Volkswagen, and Peugeot in order to establish themselves quickly in what they saw as a key industry. [Editor's note: The original version omitted the fact that American Motors Corp. is now defunct.]

"The Chinese looked around at East Asia, and saw Japan and South Korea using cars as a motor of their economic development," says Eric Harwit, professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii. "The Chinese couldn't see themselves being a first-rate modern nation unless they were making cars themselves."

Currently, China trails in per capita ownership, with about 13 cars per 1,000 people, versus some 600 per 1,000 in the US. But the pace is picking up. Less wealthy consumers are getting help from China's entry into the World Trade Organization, whose tariff reductions have encouraged domestic brands to cut prices and foreign makers to produce lower-end cars.

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