mrmopar5287: The 10 seconds preceding that scene is totally my father from my youth. He was and Oldsmobile man and bought a Delta 88 with the LF9 diesel engine. That was an engine that would totally gel up in the depths of winter. A lot of very cold mornings you had to have a heat gun blowing hot air down the throat of the intake manifold to get it to start.

mrmopar5287: BretMavrik: Sounds like a nightmare.

It largely was. Back then, diesel fuel quality was terrible, but at least you could blend some gasoline into the fuel to keep it from gelling.

Still, the car required all the glow plugs to be functioning for easy starting and even then you better use the block heater. We could plug the heater in easily at home, but my dad worked the night shift at a manufacturing plant so he'd have to park the car out by the lamp post that had a 120v outlet for some of the diesel-powered front-end loaders (for snow removal) to be plugged in. The absolute coldest days were like -20ºF in the mornings and it would be some times that the car just would not start.

I own a 2018 Chevy Cruze with the diesel engine and it's much better. Fairly easy starting right down to -22ºF and I only had a little problem with that temperature because the fuel was beginning to gel. I had bought fuel further south, drove north and parked the car, and the fuel wasn't properly treated for the temperatures. It took a solid 15 seconds of cranking before it fired and was running rough for a couple minutes. I put some extra doses of anti-gel in the tank and the next morning at -10ºF it was fine.