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I once had a friend show up to help me start a car that wasn't starting–we thought it was the battery but it turned out to eventually be a flaky ignition switch.

It took us a good 20-30 cranks to eventually narrow it down to the ignition switch (when we bypassed it it started). I couldn't believe that little paperback-sized box was capable of doing that.

And it was a relatively big, high-compression engine.

I almost still don't believe it.

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The engines and starter motors have been slowly getting more efficient over the years. I recently hired a car which, once up to temperature, would kill the engine when stopped and fire it up for you as soon as you put it back into gear. That feature wouldn't ship without a lot of confidence in the ability to start every single time without putting excessive wear on the starter.

You may already know this, but for those that are wondering - this is called "Start-Stop" and is built into many new cars. The feature saves about 10% in fuel usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-stop_system

Yeah, this was a supercar made a couple decades ago, which makes the whole thing all the more impressive. Probably a pretty inefficient starter motor on it, and no start-stop on it, obviously.

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