Polar Vortex 2019 was not nice to my car! With air temps at -40 or colder, I had serious concerns about driving it. Since I was at a brand new job, I had no choice but to go to work, which is 45 minutes from my house. Only when I went to pass someone driving way under the speed limit did I realize there was an issue. And then that issue was apparent for the rest of my commute. The dealership that I took my car to (30 minutes away from where I work) said it appeared that the turbo was frozen and recommended some things to prevent it from happening in the future.

Traveling on a very cold night to a small town in Saskatchewan, turbo freezes, mother-in-law tenses and we limp the last 40 km to her house. Had to change plans and stay a couple days until we could get a tow to the city. GM wanted to tow to another small town because it was closer but the dealership wasn’t going to be open until the 27th. Had to pay for extra mileage to get to a dealer that was open. Left vehicle there and took a loaner (also an equinox). Returned home 400 km from dealership. Had to return a couple days later to pick up my vehicle where they explained that the turbo had frozen. Interesting thing is that about 200km in to the return trip with the loaner, the loaner Equinox also froze up. Limped the last 200 km to the dealership on a double lane highway. Vehicle is not designed for very cold temperatures. Sigh

Update from Jun 9, 2019: To protect the turbo, we bought a special winterfront and have made the decision to not drive the equinox in extreme cold condition. This car was supposed to be my last car before retirement so can’t afford to sell it. So very disappointed in my carefully selected choice of car.