In single player practice the car does not move from the garage. There is no engine noise but pedals and steering wheel and gear shift all register and move in the HUD graphs. Starting a race however is just fine. There is engine noise and acceleration and I can drive the car just fine. Redone CSL Elite drivers, verified RRE program files, rebooted system and tried it with and without Dash.exe running. Also looked at settings to see if it was anything obvious. Any ideas? NEVER MIND. The problem is solved.
The game will only start your engine automatically if you don't have any key bind for Ignition/Starter. Maybe you binded a key by mistake? Otherwise, just press the Starter key
That was exactly it Ricardo. I discovered it myself almost immediately after I posted...of course. Thanks for your response anyway.