Hello all,
Short independent review coming up, bought a set of the HR polished intakes from Tarmac about a month or two back after I read some reviews of these on the US forums and was very intrigued by them.
They are well packaged from factory and when you open the box you can see that the build quality is top notch, came with everything needed for fitting and nearly 40 steps of instructions (mostly self explanatory but it helps). Installation was relatively easy although took a while to do as some parts are really snug fit almost to the point where I was worried it might not all fit in but low and behold it all does and has been obviously manufactured to really tight tolerances, I like this though as it doesn't feel like universal crap but something that was crafted for the car. One tip would be to take off your strut bar even though it doesn't call for it in the instructions, hindsight it would've made everything a lot easier and would've saved me from scratching one of the intake pipes on the strut bar tightening nut
The design of the heat shields it comes with I think is quite a bit better than the JWT ones (friend has DE with JWT we installed weekend before) and we we're discussing the heat shields and the Takeda ones seem more efficient as they enclose the filter more. Also as a plus the Takeda kit comes with everything up to the throttle body where as the JWT attaches to existing intake pipe and hence many people opt for a polished intake pipe as an extra to go with their kits. The kit looks excellent installed with its shiny pipes and the black powder coated heat shields.
Haven't been to dyno so hard to say what kind of power difference they've made, the car does feel a bit more responsive over 5k revs but that could just be due to the lovely noise it makes that makes you think that, they are pleasantly quiet in normal driving but when you put your foot down you get lovely noise which is very similar to JWT noise i've heard, they really do make you want to plant your foot at every opportunity so you can listen to them, really makes the HR sound happier.
I've recently got Invidia Gemini True Dual system to go with the intakes and like mentioned by someone at US forums when you combine the Takeda intakes with true dual exhaust you'll think you're driving a V8 and don't think that's too far off truth.
tl;dr:
Excellent quality, good sound and very pleased with purchase and at this price not sure why you'd go JWT instead.
Hope that helps, if you have any questions let me know
Thanks
.FxN