Have you ever heard of killing someone with kindness? You may be doing something similar to your car by warming it up before you start driving in the wintertime. That’s right, even though you may have been warming up your car before driving four years, you may have been killing your car with kindness.

We all know the way that it is supposed to take place. A few minutes before you hop into the car, you start it up and allow the engine to warm enough so that the inside of the cabin can be heated. It makes it a little more comfortable for us when we leave home.

Photo: PXHERE

That being said, there is also some talk about how warming up the engine in advance can be good for it. That may not be true, however, if you happen to believe what Popular Mechanics has to say about it. They say that the fastest way to warm up your engine is to drive your car immediately after starting it. It is also a good way to prolong the life of the engine.

The reasoning behind it is pretty solid. In internal combustion engines, letting the car warm up by sitting still allows additional fuel to get into the combustion chamber and ultimately, into the cylinder walls.

As a solvent, gasoline can break down the oil that is there to keep the cylinders lubricated. That means that the critical parts of the engine are going to have a shorter lifespan.

Photo: Pixabay/Rudy and Peter Skitterians

I’ll be the first one to admit that jumping into a cold car and getting started is not the most pleasant thing in the world. We all know that our car will warm up eventually and we may even know the approximate location along our route that it will get warm if we start driving immediately.

At this point, you’re probably wondering where the notion that you should warm up your car in advance of driving ever came from. USA Today chimes and by letting us know that when cars had carburetors, something that was replaced by fuel injection, it was beneficial to warm up the car in advance.

Photo: Pixabay/Karolina Grabowska

This would sometimes mean waiting as long as 10 minutes before getting in the car or you might run the risk of damaging the engine. That can be a long wait, especially if you happen to be a late riser and need to get off to work in the morning.

Over the years, technology has changed and since the 1960s, it has no longer really been necessary to warm up the car. It’s just one of those things that stuck around longer than it should, but now you know the real story.