putting holes in the air box is mostly for sound, an it is a great sound at that
I put my car on the dyno at SZ04 and a few people came running over because they didn't know what was on the dyno
now that nice intake sound is backed up by the mean sounding exhaust, enough that a worked at Meinike said it sounded like the car had alot of power (broke a stud when putting a opimized y-pipe in and didn't have time to fix myself)