Some of the posts in Rattle and Smokes 'starting' thread got me thinking. These days most manuals just tell you to turn the key without touching the throttle.
Back in the early '80s, my parents had a '79 Opel Ascona (aka Vauxhall Cavalier) 2.0, which had an 'automatic' choke. It wouldn't start from cold unless you manually depressed and released the accelerator once before cranking the engine. Invariably the choke would stay on way too long as the engine warmed and would require a blip of the throttle to get it to go off. Not very automatic to my mind. A 1983 Mazda 626 2.0 followed this, which strangely had a manual choke. At least this gave you a bit more control and didn't pretend to be automatic. Thinking back, both were carburretor engines and I guess chokes or other petrol engine cold-start aids did genuinely become far more automatic as fuel injection systems became more common.
Both of the fuel injected petrol cars that we now have start from cold without me doing anything other than turning the key.
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