Electronic engineer here, and son of an appliance repairman… (1) If you leave the door closed on the refrigerator, the food will keep for about a day. It was far less urgent than you imagined to get power to the refrigerator… (2) I am assuming you didn’t actually re-wire anything but used an existing inverter and your car’s battery and then powered the fridge via an extension cord. Appliances have a label that tells how much power they require. And adding other things adds to the load. I assume that you overloaded the inverter (which should have had a maximum power rating) causing the Voltage at the fridge to drop too low. Motors (like the compressor) don’t like brown out conditions and draw even higher currents than normal. Long thin extension cords just make it worse… The only consolation is that compressors (the most expensive part of a refrigerator) are sealed and don’t smoke when they fail. So hopefully it’s something else that burned out… And finally, I agree - If you don’t know what you are doing leave electricity alone.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, electricity is NOT something to mess with.