I thought you didn't need to warm up your car?

So i thought my mom was talking nosense, that you need to warm up your car during the winter, so this past winter it was probably 15 degrees that day i got half way down the street and my car just stops in the middle of the road, till this day it still won't start correctly, it kind of sucks but all the web sites said its not nessasary i drive a 2004 ford tauras, the mechanic looks at me crazy everytime i say i don't warm up my car WHAT DID I DO

Added (1). also i asked if you needed to warm up on here and people said it was a waste of gas, well what the hell did i do wrong

Added (2). been there done that, my car isn't a beater its a fully loaded tauras that i just got in august of 2013, second it never had problems till that day it stopped, third i'm not a bud i'm a girl.

Added (3). that day i was not gentle at all lol i was about to get on the high way, iwas late for work

Likely you had an mechanical issue unrelated to the WARMING UP.

Whatever is wrong with your car has nothing to do with whether it was warmed up or not, and you DON'T need to warm it up.

You start it up, put it in drive, and GENTLY leave, being sure not to floor it or load it for a few miles.

Now, we're talking a car that's had good maintenance, and all systems are working well, NOT some beater that has problems even in good weather. Your car is a senior citizen bud.

I might warm up 1 minute, then the first 5 miles i baby my engine. Its old, its a ton of iron and takes a long time to get to operating temp. If i were to let it idle in winter, your looking at 30 minutes to open the thermostat.
its 38 yrs old, 400 ci with 260,000 miles

Nothing works roght until the engine temperature is at heated. Specually in the winter, its harder for the engine to get cold (takes longer.) so you could have demaged everything, its hard to point out specifically what you demaged the most.

Pretend you were going jogging, straight out of sleeping on a block of ice.
Believe you might wish to warm up a bit.

Explain in more detail please.