Kids get four-wheels to toy with.

Sajid Shaikh & Amarendra Jha

SURAT/VADODARA: If you have it, flaunt it. And youngsters are doing so in style and on four wheels.

Cool curves and hot styling, fully loaded cars have caught the fancy of youngsters across the state. From school parking plots to college campuses, teenagers are getting behind the wheel and burning rubber.

Take Kinjal Sanghvi's case. Daughter of a leading diamond exporter of Surat, she is not yet 18, but already has a Muruti Zen in her name. This was her father, Chandrakant Sanghvi's way of expressing his love for daughter dearest.

Kinjal is not alone in this city of silk and diamonds. Take 21-year-old Bharat Bhatia who compelled his parents to buy him a car despite their concerns about the risky traffic. Or 22-year-old Urvi Shah who has been zooming down the crowded lanes of Varachha in her Maruti 800 for the past four years. The list is long and the age of car-owners is falling by the day. Their fathers' may have bought cars in their 40s but today's youth are on four wheels before you can say T-E-E-N.

Says Shreyas Mehta of Surat's Dhru Motors, about a third of the buyers in his showroom at Udhna are youngsters, with a fascination for mid-size cars.

So why do you need a car at such a young age? In some cases, it is to attend tuition classes without getting exposed to the heat and dust. Recently, Kamal Desai insisted his parents buy a Maruti 800 at least, so that he could "remain fresh" while attending his several coaching ...