Re: 2001 Elantra overreving on startup. Anyone else have problem?

It seems to me that you guys are complaining about the normal operation of the engine. Mine will spike to ~2500 rpm during a cold start, but it drops down immediately. Unless yours stays at high RPMs for an extended time, there's nothing wrong with it.

It's not an anomaly; it's designed that way. This is the throttle "hover" that enthusiast drivers are constantly complaining about. It does it in all gears and is actually dependent on RPMs, not the gear itself. I haven't heard a concrete explanation of whether it's an emissions reduction method or simply an adjunct to the equally annoying clutch valve to make stalling less likely in the case of a bad shift, but it's frustrating to an experienced manual transmission driver, as it make rev matching more difficult.

Mine will stay at ~2500rpm for more than 10s... it is very long and quite annoying at night for the neighbors :-( As explained in previous post, releasing the clutch quickly right after startup will fix the problem most of the time. When the trick does not work, I need to quickly put 1st gear and release the clutch a little bit while using the brakes to load the engine for a short moment. After that, the rpm drops to a normal ~1500.

I hates this kind of "feature". If someone is afraid to stall the engine, (s)he should buy automatic transaxle.

That sounds like a real problem. Take it to the dealer and demonstrate it for the service manager.

Agreed.