In an effort to expand upon Rick’s response, no one tells stories of vehicles that, having travelled 60 miles and reached designed operating temperatures, suddenly freeze up due to cold air.
In theory, a manual transmission could freeze up if you left the car idling outside of your building for most of the day, but I suspect that is unlikely.
An automatic transmission receives some heat from the engine even in park, so you should be good there, although of course wheel bearings and any differentials your vehicle has would not be heated.
As an aside, normal engines should not be idled at standard idle speed for extended periods; they don’t operate at a “good” temperature. You need to run them a few hundred RPM above normal idle in order to not screw things up; some commercial diesel engines have high idle switches, which serve the dual purpose of doing things like making an ambulance able to run all of its accessories without straining the battery.
On the contrary, I have heard such stories. They don’t seem to hold up to reasoning though. I guess there could be some precise timing that could lead to this, but it would take some very unfortunate luck. Say for example, weak antifreeze along with a car that had sat for a few hours in very cold temperatures. The heat in the engine could keep the coolant from freezing in the engine, while it froze in the radiator. The car would start, but coolant wouldn’t circulate, at least not at first. I wonder if a car could overheat before the radiator thawed? Like I said, improbable. That’s why I was kind of curious if Rick or any of the others have seen such a thing.
Could you elaborate on this a little more? What’s not “good” about idle temperatures?