if your talking about a modern wrx i wouldn't recommend it. the car comes with a cold air intake from the factory. from what ive read it is only a bottleneck when you start approaching 400whp. so unless you have already put 10-15k into the car id pass on the intake.
+1.As far as aftermarket intakes go, a Cobb with the air box is a pretty good one. I don't know about wear and tear, especially at 3000 miles. They tend to last a really long time without problems.. I would just take a look at it for anything wrong. I'm not sure what filter comes with those, but I would think about replacing it with an AEM dry flow (good filters).
Just remember that you should get the car tuned for any changes to the intake. If the car is stock and you're looking to get an intake to boost performance your money would be better spent elsewhere (turboback exhaust). The tune itself will be quite beneficial, but the gains from an intake on an otherwise stock car aren't as much as you would imagine. The stock intake on 02-07 models is pretty dang good.. I would expect a little more gains if you have an 08+ WRX (or LGT), but still not a ton. You will be able to hear the turbo more, and maybe get another 10hp out of it. Turboback exhaust with a tune on the other hand will provide quite a noticeable gain in power. Pretty much anything you do on these cars to increase power output will require remapping of the ECU to prevent damage to the engine (and to actually get the power increase).
well i sure hope your right because cheap power is always goodI would argue otherwise.. after an aftermarket downpipe (<$500) a new intake is the logical next step. Intakes aren't that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and do provide a power boost if properly tuned. Depending on the year model, the only things I would suggest in lieu of an intake after the exhaust has been done would be injectors (might as well upgrade the fuel pump while you're at it), ELH, TMIC, 3-port EBCS, maybe even TGV deletes.. probably the inlet too if the car has some years on it. You're looking at around $1k each for the headers and intercooler, not exactly cheap. If you've done all those things (less than $4k) and still haven't replaced the intake then the next step should definitely be the intake. If you're not looking to do that many mods then exhaust intake and tune isn't a bad idea (assuming your year model won't be running out of injector at that point).