ORIGINAL: 67mustang302

Cooler air isn't entirely better. A cooler air charge is denser, so in that regard it's better, however fuel WILL NOT BURN if it's in a liquid form. One of carburetions advantages over EFI is that it promotes better fuel vaporization through the Joule-Thompson effect. It's not the air charge that you want warm, but the manifold itself. When the air/fuel charge enters the manifold, it will absorb heat from the metal inthe manifoldwhich causes the fuel to vaporize in the mixture. This actually has the net effect of absorbing heat from the intake, condensing the fuel/air charge, and changing the state of the fuel to a vapor(yes, the fuel changes from a liquid to a vapor, but the entire mixture DECREASES in volume), all without any major change to the temperature of the charge itself. It gets into some thermodynamics that deals with pressure changes and volume changes of gasses. You also want a warmer fuel/air charge because it needs to be hot in order to ignite, that's what the compression cylce in the ngine is for, the spark plug alone can't ignite a fuel air charge effectively. Ideally you want a situation where the air going into your engine is as hot and as dense as possible, without resulting in detonation during combustion. Since hotter air is less dense, we generally try to get cooler air into the engine, mainly because the increase in density more than offsets the decreased burn rate from a cooler charge. Also, in most performance engines, you can raise compression to get the heat you need for combustion, and often detonation may be an issue, so the cooler air charge ends up being better. The manifold however you want to be able to warm up, though if you touch it while the engine is running, it won't feel nearly as hot as the rest of the engine, as the charge absorbs heat from it. You also don't want too much heat, if the manifold has more heat than you need, then after the fuel changes states all you end up doing is heating the charge and it then begins to expand, losing density.

As far as a Victor intake, I wouldn't put one on anything but a race car, or a monsterous street build with a large stroker.

The only reason you will put a warm air intake on a car is if you want to lose performance.