Neons take forever to light up. Why?

I just installed two of those Pilot 10" neons in each of the footwell of a Honda Civic.  I also have three of them in my GMC Sonoma and I've istalled more in other vehicles.  How I wire them up is simple. I cut off the cigarette lighter plug in and run the negatives straight to the nearest ground. Usually that is also the back of the cigarette lighter.  I run the positive lead to a rocker switch and then to the 12v cigarette lighter positive.  I've done it this way for 3 vehicles.  My problem is that they don't ever light up right away.  I flip the rocker switch, the switch's LED lights up, but it takes a minute or so for the neons to "charge up" if you will.  They'll stay off for roughly a minute and then light up when they feel like it. 

I'm wondering why?

Also...about that Honda Civic. It's a 2000 2Dr and when I installed the neons I accidently sparked the positive and negative on the cigarette lighter.  I knew I blew a fuse somewhere.  I found the Accessory outlet fuse(cigarette lighter) and replaced that so the cigarette lighter works now and so do the neons.  Only difference is that the instrument pannel wont light up and I've checked the fuse that says "gauge illumination" and it's good.  Anyone else run into this problem? Driving at night has become a pain because I can't see the gauges until I drive past a light. 

Thanks all in advance!

It is the gas inside the neons. In MOST cases they use a noble gas of some sort (such as argon) and a drop of mercury. The ignition system to get the neons working need to be warm in order to get the gas to excite and activate the phosphorus coating on the tube.

When the neon is cold or when they haven't been turned on in a while, the ignition needs to warm up. On certain colors, (usually blue but with all colors) they take longer to light up because the ignition needs more energy to activate it.

As for your gauges, one of the people here think that the light(s) in the gauge cluster burned out. Lights (incandescent) essentially are just a fuse. When one of them goes out, none of the lights work. you'll need to get behind the gauges and replace the bulb that burned out.

Fuses are installed on cars not only to protect components, but to protect the wire and the car itself. A direct short from positive to ground can light up a wire pretty quickly. When I was experimenting with some wiring, I decided to try it out and see how long it took to burn up a wire. from an average 12v car battery, a 14 gauge wire took about 6 seconds before the jacket melted off and got hot enough to light a piece of paper I wrapped around part of the wire.

The fuse is used to stop the wire from staying hot if it should ever short. If short happens inside a component, it's the same thing really, it's to prevent the component from lighting up and damaging the vehicle.