If you look at the design of the Smart's undertray - which is completely flat until you get to the engine compartment - it seems pretty clear that the way the car was designed was to have an air bath around the engine at speed. In other words, the natural flow of air is a tumbling effect from the bottom of the engine compartment upwards ensuring that cold air is constantly circulating around the engine.
In any event, I'd love to learn more about what set-up Breathless tested to show that they lost power. I could see how a metal intake pipe would hold and retain heat, basically turning into cookware in the engine compartment, but that's precisely why WORKS went with a silicone tube instead of metal in their design. Testing an intake is also problematic. On the dyno, it is nearly impossible to duplicate the airflow that the car experiences at speed without something like Dinan's mega fans. On the flip side, with data logging on the road, the precision of a dyno is gone.
Dinan BMW - Dynamometer Testing and the Modern BMW Engine
In terms of both absolute flow and throttle response, the WORKS intake is leagues ahead of the stock air box - and those that had a chance to drive my car with this setup this past weekend can certainly attest to that. Just take a look at the air path in our cars with the stock air box and resonator chamber in place and imagine having the air flow through this maze in response to pressing the accelerator:
For me, the single biggest selling point is not the peak horsepower number anyway, but the vastly improved throttle response and corresponding reduction in transmission lag.
-- DavidV
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