Hey guys, I hear your concern. I dont design parts just to look cool. My old job for 8 years as an aerodynamicist forces me to design airflow components with extreme details, that's all I know.
The ram air intake is not just a cold air source. It is designed to convert the motion of your car into usable static pressure in the airbox. The larger the frontal facing the inlet, the more potential flow there is to be realized. The design of a ram duct is not easy, I have spent years mastering CFD analyses and years learning applied compressible flow physics on the job with turbine firms. I use everything I know to make my ram inlets. The convergence angles, divergence angles, flow path areas, bellmouth compound radius and the list goes on and on.. What I have to do behind the scenes is very work intensive, and thought intensive. It takes someone with experience in design flow paths to design a proper ram duct, you cant just slap a tube on your car and expect to gain any usable stagnation pressure.
With that said, testing is also a challenge. Since a ram duct can't be tested on a dyno. The intent of a ram intake is not cold air, although that is a good byproduct because it sits so low and far away from the radiator. The intent is to gather fast moving air at the high pressure zones in your car, and convert that high pressure air into static pressure in your airbox. To test this requires high speed vehicle runs which are dangerous and can be costly for people to do. I have developed in-house methods to test the intakes. So far we have seen a nice increased chunk of mass air flow at vehicle speed. I am not going into details yet as there is more information to be gathered.
The mod is not just aesthetic. You can have a functional performance part, look very good too. I know it is hard to believe! But I offer these types of products because of my manufacturing ability. A lot of people are not used to the combination so it is hard to accept something that looks so cool, also performs like nothing else on the market today.