On my recent anger management break to Mallorca, my pals rented a 1 series BMW. Nice enough wee car, manual, four wheels, air con... and some sort of bloody green hippy engine cut out to save the planet when you're waiting at lights.
Auto Start-Stop they call it.
"When you next come across a stop sign or red light, or join the end of a traffic queue, it won't bust be your car that comes to a rest. Auto Start-Stop automaticall switches off your engine whenever you're stationary and in neutral, saving fuel and cutting CO2 emissions. Simply depress the clutch and the engine restarts automatically."
Lovely sentiment, but it can get to fuck.
Sat on a hill, about to turn onto a roundabout, handbrake on, clutch depressed, in to neutral, engine turns off, just as it's being put into gear... FUCK! Now you automatically try to restart the car, but pressing the ignition button of course turns the fucking car off. So you now have to start the car again, wait for another gap in the traffic, just for this fantastic thing to cut the engine again. Bastardos!
Yes, there is a wee button that switches this "feature" off, but since the hire company thoughtfully blagged the manual for the car, we had no way to figure out how to permanently switch this feature off...
I'd be surprised if this sort of eco-ass-hattery hasn't caused a few crashes.
And in other news, despite this, it was a lovely holiday. I ate a little octopus. Tapas there is so much better. Almost as if they invented it or something.
