Hmmm, I see what you mean about having the brake lights coming on before the brakes 'kick in'. This wouldn't be done on a production car as it be abused by people flashing their brake lights as warnings. People have enough to worry about without people making up hazards for you.

As for warming up, the camshafts are the worst effected by idle. As the valves have to climb quite a steep ramp (on the cam), at idle the wear is actually much worse. You'll knacker your cams quite quickly (although I don't think most people idle enough to cause a problem).

That said, our painter once drove a car into the spray booth at his old work at 5:30, then went home. The next day he came in, and found the spray booth filled with smoke because he'd forgotten to turn it off, and it had been ilding all night. Needless to say the customer never found out.

This was at a main dealer :O

Hrm. About the oil, I probably won't go for race or motorsports oils (as Bal00 suggested), dispite my plans to autocross with the car. The reason being, I'm not all that sure how often I'll be able to get it out to autocross in, seeing as I haven't found any sort of schedule or anything for autocrossing that happens more often than a month. I think a day where I drive the car hard per month isn't enough to warrent motorsports engine oil for the other 29-30 days in the month.

But on Vain's other points...
I'll want new tires soon, but is that just because of wear, or more for performance reasons? I mean, if the tires that come with the car are already pretty decent as far as performance, is there any real reason I'd want to change them?

Quote from Vain :

1. I can't imagin a way to keep water away other than keeping the car dry.

Heh, well I ment more along the lines of, 'what can be done to the car if I know its going to be wet to minimize the effect of the wetness'. I'm really thinking about cleaning out that garage now because of it too. The only downfall, moving a garage full of boxes to my fiberglass insulation filled attic with no floorboards (so I'll have to bring up and lay down plywood sheets). But I think it'll be worth it. Plus it'll keep the sun from beatting down to hard on the paint, which although it has nothing to do with performance, it'll at least help keep it looking nice .

EDIT:
I was just thinking, about the wet...
I was thinking about how brake pads heat up during braking, and how rotors probably would also heat up, as the pad heats up because of the friction between the two. What sort of effect would, say, rain water touching the rotors and brake pads during heavy braking have?
To illustrate an example, say I'm driving, and its raining. Because of road conditions, there is a puddle on the road that I wasn't aware of until the car in front of me hit it hard. In order to prevent hitting him, I would probably slow down if I couldn't change lanes, and depending on the effect of the water on his car (I've had my car go from 30 to 15 when I hit a puddle I didn't see once, because it was raining so hard my visibility had dropped a good deal. And I didn't let off any gas pressure when I hit the puddle) I may have to brake pretty hard. If I do a hard brake to avoid hitting him, then hit the puddle, what would happen to my brake pads and rotors? Anything seriously bad? (The only solution to preventing this to happen that I can think of, is avoid driving in the rain, so I'll probably just have to deal with it if it ever does happen)

Nothing would happen, the brake pad would push the water out of the way.

Lots of info here, learned a thing or two. Cheers.

Tristan, I can light up the brake lights without pushing enough to use the actual brakes on my parents car (Citroen C4). It has around 5mm of travel where its very easy to push, and then after that it feels like normal. I think its designed like that so you can place the auto box in park etc without actually using the brakes.

Interesting. I might have to blag a test drive in a C4 now and see for myself

As for the water it wouldn't be a problem if you're using them already when you hit the water. But if you go through a stream or a ford across the road, then afterwards always use your brakes reasonably hard to clear the pad and disc.

On a road car you won't get the discs/rotors glowing (unless something is very wrong with your car - manufacturers just would NOT make a car that could get steel or iron red hot without boiling the brake fluid instantly), but the local heat can be quite high. Thus any water in the system will get boiled away.

The automotive braking system is pretty refined now after many many years of use, and they are designed to cope with Iceland to the Sahara via England, in all conditions. I very much doubt you'll have a problem with them.

Having said that you might suffer one of the three types of brake fade.

Green Fade - the various agents in the friction material boil out and form a layer of gas between disc and rotor. Nice pedal, no brakes.
Pad Fade - you've overheated your brakes, and the material has gone beyond it's operating temperature. Nice pedal, very little braking.
Fluid Fade - you've boiled your brake fluid. Soft pedal, no brakes.

None are good. Drive remotely sensibly (you can loon about quite a bit, but don't go mental) and you'll never suffer these on the road.

@Vain - keeping your car in the garage is good for the paint, because it's affected by UV-rays from the sun, and acid parts of the rain.

@tristan - fluid fade: someone may have cut the lines

@shinrar - our garage is big and empty enough for 2 cars. We store our stuff and other locations