Over the years we’ve seen customers get creative with their front license plate placement. Most are not too keen on drilling into their bumper and because of this, many choose to mount their plate on to one of the vehicle’s open grills.We recently tested what happens on our dyno when mounting a European license plate to the front lower grill on a MK7 GTI versus keeping the grill completely open. We tested the vehicle’s performance on our in house dynapack dynamometer in our sound master dyno cell with our typical fan setup used for calibration and power figure collection. The hood was kept close. Keep in mind, while a dyno setup can attempt to recreate real world airflow conditions, each setup will be different and can result in different power figures.With the plate installed on the front lower grill, we found it essentially acted like a solid metal shield, blocking most of the airflow across the intercooler and engine radiator. Our back-to-back results showed a loss in turbocharger spool, torque and horsepower across the entire power band. At stage 1 power levels, our uncorrected torque figures at the wheels were down up to 22 FT-LBS of torque and 16 horsepower! Pouring over the data we could easily see why. Intake air temperature (IAT) was much higher, resulting in less ignition advance, which directly translated to a loss of power.APR highly recommends keeping the front grills open and clear from cosmetic modifications, license plates and debris such as leaves, dirt and snow. Proper airflow is absolutely critical for making power and as such the grill areas should only be used for cooling the intercooler, coolant radiators and auxiliary oil cooling systems.