i have the Vararam with no issues, install it correctly and you will hardly see the cuts in the oem plastic cover. I have the duct from the front grille too. everything is relative when it comes to CAI, my tuner said Vararam is one of the best bc of the airflow at higher speeds..i would get one and then have it dyno tune with the rest of the money. that will give you the best bang for the buck

from what I understood in the past the CAI modification on our cars doesn't do much at all and really isn't worth it. I'm not doing it to my car. My last car, on the other hand, being a turbo needed the air to be as cool as possible and it made huge differences. On that car I made sure to keep the air as cool as possible (large FMIC and a CAI). Naturally aspirated it isn't going to hurt "as much".