Why Do People Still Think That They Have To Warm Up Their Car Before They Drive?
Once upon a time, before you drove anywhere you really needed to warm up the car, and that was a fact. Those cars were built using old technology and they actually needed to get wormer before a ride in order to perform properly. But is this the case with modern cars? Well mostly no since as you read along you will find some examples of cars that can benefit from warming up before a ride. So far there have been ton of arguments and evidence that new cars do not need a warm up period at all and yet there are tons of people that stick to the ways of the old and they still keep warming up their cars.
For those of you that do not enjoy reading long articles, lets clear this issue now. If you drive a “normal” modern vehicle that was made in this century you are fine with leaving within a minute after you start the car (or immediately since most of us back up for a few seconds before we drive off), unless, you are driving a very high performance vehicle like a BMW M or above.
New cars have modern engines run by computers that know the exact temperature of the engine at all times and adjust the engine management accordingly in order to have the car perform like it is supposed to. The myth was additionally kept alive for a few more years because of the turbo charged vehicles. These engines actually benefited from being warmed up before starting their drive and even needed to get cooled down before they were shut off.
This was mainly because of the oil at the time since oil viscosity would change dramatically with temperature, but with the introduction of full synthetic oils, there is no more need for getting it warmed up. Cooling it was beneficial for the engines since the turbocharger is very hot after a long drive, and the engine needs to run for the oil in it needs to circulate to cool it down after stopping for a few minutes.
But even with these types of engines the new technology made it safe for them to be run just like a normal car and actually not need a warm up and cool down period anymore.
Now like we said in the begging we come to the high performance vehicles that extract huge amount of horsepower out of their engines. These cars use high end materials for their built and are made with precision that usually surpasses the regular normal vehicle. We mentioned the BMW M cars earlier because the newer models have an actual rather modern feature that will bring limit the maximum RPMs depended of engine (and oil) temperature. So basically if you do not own a BMW M, or Mercedes AMG, Ferrari, Porsche 911 or the similar, you are fine with just driving away as soon as you start your engine, but in case you are the lucky ones, please see the manufacturer’s manual for more information.
