My vehicle stays outside in very cold Ottawa winters and starts perfectly every time.

 

I live in the north part of Norway, and my experience says that as long as you make sure your car is in good shape, you should be ok.

- A good battery, charge it once in a while since it runs most of your cars equipment (and not at least the startup!)
- fresh oil
- spark plugs are ok

And if you want a engine-warmer, and even a interior heater. DEFA has everything you want. Even with a remote or timer.

Check: http://cor.defa.com/

 

Thanks everyone for the responses! I'll think about the trickle charger option seeing as I only have a short commute, but glad to hear no one has experienced too many issues in the cold.

I must say that I can now truly appreciate the retrofitted heated m-tech steering wheel installed last spring.

 

Funny you should mention about there not being a block heater in Canadian BMW's. I've never even looked to see if I have one, as we rarely get temps here (Calgary) that are cold enough to justify plugging in. When I used to live in Winnipeg, though, it was a different story (and you need to contend with 'square tires' in addition to difficult cold starts). Now that BMW uses 0W30 full synthetic oil, it makes a big difference to cold starting.

The option I used in my 3-Series when I lived in Winnipeg (mid '80s), is an in-line water heater. It gets spliced into your heater hose and warms the coolant and circulates it through the engine block. The heat radiating from the block and getting trapped under the hood will even help keep the battery warm. See if you can find one of these. I got mine at Canadian Tire, but that was many years ago. The other thing I noticed was that I seemed to get heat a lot faster from my vents after starting compared to cars that had block heaters.

 

No problems here.

Whenever the temps go subzero, I plug in my block heater. A cold start is very stressfull to the engine. Just search the web.

- Antti -

 

Last winter we didn't see temps above freezing for almost 2 months. Coldest it got was about -2F (about -19C for you non-americans out there) and to top it off, my car was completely buried in snow for about 4 weeks with no way to move it or shovel the snow, it had compacted to solid ice, and the city was kind enough to leave a mountain of snow from the plows all along my side of the street...so every 2-3 days I started and ran my car for about 10-20mins to make sure the battery wouldnt crap out. Never had a problem, cranked a little slow but I blame the frozen battery.

 

I have not experienced any problems in low temperatures but I charge my battery form time to time.

A little bit OT:
Have anyone experienced a different sound when you close your front doors in sub zero temperatures? Mine doesn't sound as compact as they use to do. The doors make a rattle sound more like a simple car when you close them. The rear doors are fine.