Diesel engine and winter do not match

It is winter now — even here in Szczecin, Poland. Normally it is quite warm here — about 0°C but this year is different. Today we had -19°C at 8:00 in the morning, yesterday it was -13°C and few other days had similar temperatures.

Ok, I am spending most of time at home but my wife has to visit few places so each day gives me extra work for the morning: starting car. We have Citroën C3 with 1.4 HDI engine and as most Diesel cars it is fragile to low temperatures. Before Xmas I exchanged battery from 44Ah one to 60Ah (which should be there from start) so at least one problem less (carrying battery to home is extreme — I do not want to think how much force is needed to get it from car as it is very tightly mounted).

So each morning I go down, remove snow from car (if it was snowing during night) and do what is needed to get car running. There was just one day when it did not wanted to start, but we got it solved by using cables and second car ;D

But even due to this ‘problem’ I like this car. Uses about 5.5 l/100km of oil and drives nicely. Ok, maybe it’s 68PS is a bit too low for highway (as 130km/h is basically top of comfort driving with 150km/h being maximum usable) but we nearly do not have such roads here…

car