every car loses power when they have the ac on... the compressor is connected to the pulleys so obviously the car is gonna lose some power; on cars w/ low HP, you can see the difference more... and I agree w/ HPJ: to win some power, you gotta lose some comfort...

 

you know what actually does pretty much eliminate this problem with the AC compressor stealing power, forced induction, the only car i ever owned (well actually two cars, i've owned two of them) that didnt suffer from this problem were 1g Turbo DSM's, i had a 91 TSi AWD, and a 92 Laser RS-T (FWD turbo) neither of those cars seemed to lag at all with or without AC on, once you were in boost there wasnt a noticeable difference, boost is great, i miss being able to pass people on two lane roads without even having to downshift. Just step on the throttle, boost creeps up and you slide right by, what i dont miss however is how turbocharged cars run out of wind at alot lower rpms (unless your running a huge turbo, and then you have to fight turbo lag)

my fwd Laser had a 16G, a slightly larger than factory turbocharger, so there wasnt much lag, but i do remember at like 2200rpm, in 5th, boost would come on very slowly compared to the AWD which i never got around to modding much more than bolt ons, it would spool to full boost in 5th just flooring it...

i still have a 14b somewhere that one day will go onto my Accord, hopefully