h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In army I had the "pleasure" of making acquaintance with UAZ which is a Russian jeep. Never have I met another car with so much suprises. You can always get an UAZ running, no matter how cold it is, though it often takes at least 15min. Turning off the thing is the problem. A month ago I had to drive to a command post which was about 30km away. It was -25 C outside, nevertheless the UAZ started easily, after 15 minutes of cursing . When I reached my destination I parked the car, turned off the engine, took the keys and got off the car. When I was 10m from the car it suddenly turned on... it was pretty freaky, me standing 10m away from the car with keys in my pocket and car starting all by itself.

I had a very similar experience with an old Land Rover.
I had a misfire, so I switched the engine off and removed the keys then opened the bonnet to see if there was anything obvious amiss. Nothing was, so a slammed the bonnet down...and the engine started!

Hmm, reminds me of the Mercedes 608D (7-ton truck) I used to drive in one of my first jobs. Built in the mid-1980's, built like a tank (it NEVER failed to start, even at -30 deg C, and it was almost impossible to kill the engine, let alone do any kind of damage to that 4-litre 4cyl high volume, low rev and feisty torque monster that produced a mere 85 HP) with controls to match. It had a "hand throttle" knob that had to be turned counterclockwise all the way to enable starting (mechanically controlled direct fuel injection and no glow plugs, of course. Bring your own ear protection). When you wanted to stop the engine, you simply pushed it in against a heavy spring, cutting off the fuel supply. There was no other way to do it - removing the ignition key simply resulted in the alternator warning light coming on, with the engine running on rather unimpressed. The problem was that you had to keep it pressed in for a few seconds just to make sure the engine had stopped completely. Normally you would also put the gears in neutral then, as the clutch was really hard to hold down. If you had been in too much of a hurry, you would hear a few metallic coughs before the engine caught on and started idling again, all by itself, while you had already walked a few steps away from the cab. Rather eerie, but always a good laugh with the newbies. One day there was an extra smart one. He wanted to make a show of being brisk and efficient, so he stopped the (empty) truck for loading by simply holding down the clutch while braking and pushing in the knob, keeping first gear engaged and disregarding the hand brake. He then jumped out of the cab (literally off the clutch), and before he had even realized the truck had run off and hit a wall about 3 meters away...