well, last night my flexi-pipe gave up and basically got left with the exhaust gases going from engine block, manifold, downpipe, air.

and as boney said, only noticed a slight loss in power at lower revs, but top end seems quicker if anything (and deafingly loud!!), and thats with NO backpressure, so i doubt you'll lose much at all (bare in mind, i do have a 1.6 8v, so VR6 might be slightly different