You need to provide a schematic showing what you currently have. In general, most stuff will be referenced to the car ground system and anything I build would share a ground with the car ground. That said, we need to see just what you have to make sure - if you are reading a temp sensor that is on the engine (an existing one) then you are probably already referenced to ground.
If at all possible don't connect any sensor to vehicle chassis, always take the ground from the wire
back to the Arduino - otherwise your sensor is just going to be picking up voltages caused by
ground currents from the various lights and engine (you'd have a ground loop). Yes you share
ground with the vehicle, but at one point only, usually the supply.