epegasus

Aerodynamics is complicated stuff. Ram air is easy and striaght forward but usually isn't what happens with production cars. Top fuel dragsters, Yes. Production grocery getters, No. What is important when talking about production cars is air flow and aerodynamics. A plane's wing generates lift by diverting air over the top of the wing faster than the air trapped under the wing thus creating a vacuum. The vacuum under the wing pulls air upward creating a lifting force which lifts the plane. The same happens with a car moving along the road. Air rapidly travels over the car and potentially can create vacuums under the car causing unwanted lifting. Designers add wings, splitters and spoilers to counteract this lift. Another technique is to smooth the flow of air under the car to cause a vacuum condition along the car's surface which is the oposite of how planes fly. When a car's shape creates down force an opening on the surface that has a clear path to the underside of the car will literally suck air from above the car and exhaust it underneath. This is a benefit of the hood venting on the SRT. Air rapidly traveling under the car draws air through the vents which also pulls heat out of the engine bay lowing the temporature around the air intake and cooling the air going into the motor.

I read a review of the SRT where they complained that the hood vents were too small compared to the large car. It could be argued that if the vents were made too large they would allow too much flow from above to beneath the car cancelling the vacuum affect which aids downforce. I can't say this is the definitely the case but cost cutting would have reduced the vent to just holes in the hood. That's not what we have. We have intricate ducting that purposely directs and smoothly guides air through specific routes. Took a lot of expensive engineering and design work to do that and it wasn't purely for looks, either.