[XutvJet]

For daily driving and a short pull here and there, even with a tune, a larger intercooler won't do you much good. During normal driving, there's hardly any air moving through the various intake pipes and IC, thus they get heat soaked. When you're stopped at a light or parked the car for a while and then start driving, everything is heat soaked thus IATs are higher, especially in the summer. The larger IC isn't going to help you here because the air movement is low. The advantage to the larger IC is heat management under hard driving, not normal, low rpm, low speed driving. If anything, I'd argue that a larger, all metal IC will heat soak worse around town compared to the smaller plastic/metal OEM IC. A metal charge pipe will also heat soak and increase IATs during normal driving.

During steady state, normal around the town driving (speeds ranging from 40mph to 70mph), my M235 (all stock intake, IC, etc.) typically sees about 15 to 25 degrees over ambient (higher IATs correlate to slower speed driving and ambient temp). On hot and humid 80+ degree days and at stop light for around 2 minutes, IATs can creep up to over 40+ degrees above ambient. This is due to the mostly sealed engine bay and all the piping heat soaking, including the IC which sits right in front the scalding hot radiator. Plus the pavement is screaming hot too and probably 20 degrees over ambient at 1 foot off the pavement surface. Not until you get going for a few minutes, does the everything cool off as the air blows through the engine bay pulls away some of the heat. When everything is heat soaked (like sitting at the light) and IATs high, the car can feel like a pig and be quite laggy until it cools down. Once IATs crest 120 degrees, the DME is yanking timing, thus power. No car is immune to this. It sucks, but a larger IC isn't going to help this if this is your biggest complaint.

If you're not doing longer duration, hard driving, and/or don't have a ton of power mods, you may want to save your money.