i was looking into this recently as it happens. There is several options for what they call 'pre-heaters' - and me being me was really looking into it as a way of having the engine warm (or near operating temp) when starting just for wear and tear reason, completely over the top for our climates as Charlies says but i can't help myself sometimes i get carried away... There seems to be 3 main options.
So you can buy little electric pumps that go in the cooling system circuit, these tend to have a 2-3kW heating element and a little electric pump, so you install in in a coolant line and then put the wire somewhere its easily accessible to that you can plug it in to an extension lead from your house/garage or whatever and so when plugged in it comes on and starts heating and pumping the coolant round upto a set temperature. Then when you want to go out you just unplug it and start car and the engine is instantly at 60+ degreesC, and of course you get hot air instantly cause the coolant is warm.
Or you can get these high temp heat mats, they are designed to stick to the bottom of the sump and again have a cable oyu can run to a power outlet in house or garage. These things heat the oil in the sump upto about 90 degreesC. I think these are more to help cold starts in really cold places then to preheat the engine, I assume as soon as the oil starts pumping round the really cold engine block it will cool down pretty quickly and the engine will still need to warm up properly, although i guess left on long enough it would warm it a bit through conduction....
The best thing i have found though is an aftermarket preheater kit by Webasto, this kit is basically the same principle as the electric pump heater but it uses fuel from the tank to make heat meaning no cables fromt he car to the house etc. I have not yet found a listed price for a full kit anywhere but its a cool bit of kit as it comes with controls you can operate from a phone, so you can call your car in the morning and tell it to turn the pre-heater on and from what i can glean from the website you can even wire it into the fans for the cars heating so it will warm the inside of the car and demist the windows etc.. And alot of diesel cars have an auxiliary heater which is used to warm the engine faster as diesels really dont like being cold and also emissions reasons - if you have that it can plumb into that rather than having an extra heater installed. Been considering buying my mrs one for for diesel 500 as a present as she hate she cold and also her work is only just far enough to get the car warm and i don't like that the car mostly does short little trips, especially in the cold.
let's have some photos of your car!!