I feel your pain when it comes to hoods/scoops, etc
To stay under my hood, I can't run a spacer and I use a dropped base air cleaner so it don't suck a rock in and all that means is can't get it to work right and throttle will not go to WOT and yes we tried some things and not done yet but it slows the car down
If you want it to look like a certain era and use certain parts, it limits you .
I highly doubt that if the old guys could of went super fast without altering wheelbase and 100 other things they did they would of , we look back and now it looks cool but, then I'm sure there were people that didn't like to do it
I do agree on the bigger, pro style scoop for getting those carbs in clean air but, that should not cause it to backfire not start ,etc