Had a clear bra on my Mazda, and it did a nice job of catching the rocks.
As for warming up, yeah, warm up enough so your defrost is working to keep your windows clear, but don't gun it till you've been driving a while. Some cars now have rev limiters that cut back until the engine is hot.
I like the list, but it's funny how luck comes into play as well. When I was 19 or so I wanted to get a car (just moved to Colorado, so my motorcycle was no longer a year round vehicle). Anyways, I picked up a 1989 Chevy Corsica from my buddy for 300 bucks to get around until I could get out to Denver to go car shopping. Had 90k miles on it, not known for reliability. Anyways, I just kept driving it and putting off car shopping and likely a car payment as long as I could. But I didn’t want to put money into the Corsica. So once a year, about 30k miles I’d change the oil. And it didn't leak or burn oil, so I wouldn't add to it either. Didn’t treat it well, only replaced things if they were becoming dangerous (tires/brakes/lights). Drove it with my foot to the floor all the time. Had a sparkplug foul up and end up thinking the cylinder flooded, because I replaced it and was running on 3 cylinders for a couple weeks and just when I'd given up hope, all of a sudden I noticed the car wasn’t completely gutless anymore (just back to old 80’s chevy 4 banger gutless). It wouldn’t die. Took it cross country to Florida a half dozen times. I remember driving through a road that was flooded over. And it died in the middle of the road (exhaust underwater). A couple buddies were laughing at us as water was seeping in the bottom of the door. Turned the key again, it started right up and drove on.
Anyways did that for 3 years. Car had 180k miles on it at that point. Moved, and sold it to my roommate who offered $500 for it as a commuter since he knew it wouldn’t die. I wouldn’t take more than what I paid. Came back a couple years later. He was still treating it like crap, and it was at 250k miles.
