Am I missing the point over engine covers? Genuinely - there's no functional purpose they serve that I'm missing? To me it's just unnecessary extra piece of plastic adding weight to the car for a purely aesthetic function - which you barely ever see anyway as it's hidden under the bonnet. The only function I can see it serves is to stop the engine designers having to make everything neat and tidy, they just have to design this instead with its fake intake plenums and badges.
I'd much rather see the real engine and as you may have guessed by now, can't bear the fake, unnecessary (as far as I'm aware) covers, especially on the bigger engine equipped cars (V8s, V12, etc.), all you see under the bonnet of an Aston Martin, AMG Merc, BMW, etc. is a sea of plastic, almost a second bonnet!