Okay so it's a euro spec model here in Germany as I'm in the service overseas but I don't think this issue would be harder to identify based on this.

Here's the issue. Most times when I start the car it starts but cuts out right after it's kicked over and caught and sounding like it should just run from there... after that it will fail many times. It just rumbles, almost starts, etc... many different variations of ALMOST starting... finally it will start and run fine. This can happen 1 time, 3 times, or in some cases I might sit there embarrassed for 5 minutes trying to start it.

When I tried to show it to a mechanic it started up just fine (of course) so since then I've been reading up and speaking to some friends about the possibilities.

Some thing I've read speak about the coil, the immobilizer (none of which I know what are) and a friend mentioned it could be some sort of sensor which regulates the fuel air mixture. If I were flooding the engine with too rich of fuel could that happen?

Another consideration is this... if I let the car's battery die on me... leave the lights on or whatever, just unhook it for a while then hook it back up - and start it... it runs in a "weird" state for a while... seems like everything has "reset." The car idles and runs at a higher RPM than usual and the transmission seems to be off for sure... BUT the car starts like a champ when it's like this... sometimes for a couple weeks at a time... leading me to believe the sensor idea - as if the cars computer was reset to factory defaults or something and it's bypassing the sensor in question.

I'm not all that adept with the car as you can tell... it's 16 years old but it runs very well once it's started. I want to go ahead and sell it in the next year before I get back to the US so I would like to fix this issue before I get there! Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!