When an engine has been sitting long enough for the temperature gauge to rest on the bottom peg, lubricants may have drained out of the upper sections of the engine. The engine needs some time for parts to reach optimal temperatures and lubricants to flow throughout it. Most fuel-injected cars don’t need to sit static and “warm up,” they can be driven as soon as ignition is achieved, but high revolutions per minute should be limited until the temperature gauge is sitting where it spends most of its time during normal use. Modern BMWs even illustrate this on the tachometer; higher RPMs are illuminated yellow and red until the engine reaches what its computer considers to be “optimal operating temperature.”
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