Remote Starters Are A Seriously Underrated Car Feature

The “real feel” temperature at Texas Motor Speedway during this past weekend’s NASCAR event tipped the scales at over 110 degrees Fahrenheit — a decidedly brutal heat that you just couldn’t escape, even in the shaded grandstands. Thankfully, I was actually driving a new car (the 2024 Alfa Romeo Tonale), and that meant I was blessed with one of the finest automotive technologies in modern history: the remote start, which I could take advantage of from the grandstands.

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Full disclosure: Alfa Romeo provided me with a Tonale for my trip up to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to spend a weekend watching stock cars do their thing.

My full review of the Tonale is coming soon (though for clarity, I had the Tonale Veloce, the top-of-the-line trim), but I just needed to write about this one life-saving feature. See, my husband and I turned up at Texas Motor Speedway at about 11 in the morning, and we roasted in the heat until the Xfinity Series race wrapped up in the evening. By the time the final few laps of the race fell away, we were sunburned despite the regular application of sunscreen, dehydrated despite chugging the equivalent of five gallons of water, and just generally exhausted from running around the track like chickens with our heads cut off. It was one of those weekends where I learned just how much I can sweat from some seemingly ridiculous parts of my body, such as my kneecaps, which looked as if they were crying.

So, as the Xfinity race came to a close, I turned to my husband and asked, “How much do you wanna bet that I can remotely start the Alfa from here?”

We were sitting in the main stretch grandstands close to the track’s first turn, while the Alfa was parked in the infield. As the crow flies, it is probably half a mile away.

“I bet you can do it, but you’ll probably have to do the mouth-extender thing,” my husband said, before demonstrating how he used to press a key fob into the bottom of his chin before pressing the remote start button; allegedly this was supposed to extend the range of the remote starter.

Instead, I just pointed the keys off into the ether and let ‘er rip. Sure enough, the lights on the Alfa flashed to let us know that it had started up (and since it’s a PHEV, the car was running entirely on electric power). And it remained on as we disembarked from the grandstands, crossed beneath the track via a tunnel, and moseyed our way to the infield. When we arrived, the Alfa was still running, and inside, it was blissfully cool.

Yes, I know remote starters have been around for an actual life age, but as someone who has firmly adopted the Jalopnik ethos of never owning a car with any amount of excess technology beyond a half-ass decent stereo system, it can still feel like a novelty. Especially when I can start up my ride from a half-mile away while residing in a state hotter than Satan’s asshole.