recent vintage Chevy Malibu trunk

[GeorgeJ.]

I rented a Chevy Malibu last week (which had the start/stop button on the dash rather than needing a key to start it) and the trunk never seemed to lock. I would lock the car but the manual trunk button under the trunk lid by the camera would still open the trunk with the car locked.

Is this a bad design feature and the trunk never actually locks? Or does it lock when the key fob is far enough away from the car?

I didn't trust leaving anything in the trunk of this car....

[Hemlock140]

That's because there is a proximity sensor in your key fob that tells the car that you are the driver. Lock the car, then leave that inside the house in a far room, and try it again. Keyless entry.

[Mouser]

I was more disappointed that every time you come up to
a stop the car shuts down until you hit the gas


It took a bit, but found a way around this silly engineering marvel

[GeorgeJ.]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

That's because there is a proximity sensor in your key fob that tells the car that you are the driver. Lock the car, then leave that inside the house in a far room, and try it again. Keyless entry.

Thanks for the info. I was hoping that's how it worked...

[cvetters63]

Originally Posted by Mouser

I was more disappointed that every time you come up to
a stop the car shuts down until you hit the gas


It took a bit, but found a way around this silly engineering marvel

Most new cars do that these days. A lady came into my buddy's Audi dealership to return her new Audi. She was complaining that every time she'd come to a stop the car would die and when she tried to restart it, it would say that it's already running, so she'd shut it off again and restart it, and all the while cars were honking at her to go, and how could something so expensive be broken already?


He tried to explain to her that most new cars did that to save fuel and that it was a properly working car. She didn't believe him and was going to go buy a BMW instead. Hate to break it to her but they do it too.


It may not seem like it saves much gas to the individual owner, but spread that out over a few million cars doing that and you start to see millions of barrels of oil saved per year.