This is all about emissions (apart from the horribly recalcitrant gearshift, which seems to take about an hour to work properly)!
It is worth noting that modern automatic cars use an 'optimum warm-up' program in the engine management, which is designed to get the catalysts up to operating temperature as soon as possible (apparently, most of your engine emissions occur in the first 10 minutes, in a typical, average drive). Interestingly, this is mainly achieved by hanging on to lower gears for longer - the extra revolutions warm the engine faster. When asked whether this wears out the engine, as we have always been told to keep revs down when the engine is cold, I was told that modern synthetic oils are thinner, to protect a cold engine as well as reduce internal friction.
Without going off into a new thread about synthetic oils in water-cooled engines vs mineral oils in air-cooled engines, the argument is that the target is to get your engine warm quickly.
The engine is probably lumpy and unresponsive because the mixture is as lean as possible to keep emissions down.
The owners manual is not very helpful, simply advising against high revolutions and full throttle, without stating what 'high' actually means!
In the 'olden days', we were always told to warm up 911's before driving them - something to do with the dry-sump protecting a cold, stationary engine. We are now advised to NOT warm up the car whilst stationary. But these days you are never really sure whether these sage words in manuals are designed to protect your investment, or save the world!
Do the guys with 'aftermarket' or reprogrammed chips suffer less?
] I wouldn't worry too much. Nice warm blanket over the engine on cold nights. Treat her like your wife, she just takes a little time to get up in the mornings
