>>Wind Chill is only used when people and exposed skin are an issue.
>>A vehicle could care less for this calculation.

Mostly.

You are right that if the air temp is 0 degrees, and the
windchill is -50 degrees tha tthe car only "feels" the 0 degree
air when it's sitting outside "chillin"

But when you start to drive at 55 MPH, and the windchill is
-50 degrees, the car is getting an enormous amount of cooling.

The same amount of cooling as if it were standing still and it was
-50 degrees out.

What that means is that when you are driving 55 MPH, you might
not get enough heat generated to heat the interior. (I haven't had this problem.)
but you won't cool the engin down to -50 degrees.

It's complicated to understand, but cars do indeed feel windchill
when they are hot and driving around, but they will never in any
circumstances cool below the regular-old air temperature.

 

Not only that, but when a car is outside and in a protected area, compared to out in the open, you notice a big difference. In the open, the wind makes sure that every part of your car is COLD, making it the lowest possible temperature it could be. Trust me on this one. While I agree it can't get colder than the outside temp, it can get it there much faster with wind.

 

I finally got it back after 3 days in the shop. They replaced the engine wiring harness (along with several other things (hood scoop nuts, sunroof rattle fix {not}, and driver's seat leather.

Even though I specifically asked them to record the codes pulled from the ECU, they didn't do it. They did reference a TSB from 12/02 that talked about bad connectors in the wiring harness.

It's working good again, so I'm not complaining. Also, they gave me a 04 Cooper CVT to drive while it was being worked on. The CVT is interesting, not as smooth as I would have expected. It seemed like it would stumble a bit at first take off. I did like the color scheme - it was BRG/BRG with the Cordoba Tan leather and Anthracite dash - very nice.