undoing a race car

I just purchased a 97 Escort and I'm having a couple problems. It is obvious somebody has modified it to get more performance(racing) and the ac no longer works.in fact, the fan(even the heater) doesn't seem to blow at all.I'm assuming the hole system was disconnected to get more HP. I live in arizona so i prefer cold air to a fast car. also I notice i have to give it a lot of gas to get it going in first gear(5 speed) else it stalls. the guy who sold it to me thought it might be a mass air flow sensor(?). a friend told me i might want to replace the after market cold air intake with a stock one from a junkyard. anyway i'm not a mechanic but i'm reasonably mechanically inclined so I would like to try to fix it myself if possible.any feedback is greatly appreciated.-chris

Honestly, the cold air intake is probbaly not relal\ted to your slow-starting problem. If they do anything, CAIs improve thrttle response. Biggest drawback is that if they are really "open" the air/fuel misture canb end up a bit lean; that and if the filter on the end isn'tvery good, tends to let more crap accumulate in the actual intake body/plenum over time, so I wouldn't worry about that.
Can you be more descruptive about excatly how it acts from a start? If you hold the clutch in (disengaged), do you have a good strong RPM/throttle response if you step on the pedal? If so, does that mean that it just dosn't have much "power" getting going, like there's no guts behind the RPMs?
How many mileso n the car? Ever done a compression test? It may be that the PO just wore it out and the rings are shot, worn pistons etc...?

As for the A/C, that could be alot of different things.
First off, if somebody disconnected it solely for HP reason, the only way to get more HP would be to physically remove the compressor from the drivebelt; that's the only part of the system that'd create "drag" w/o the system being on. In other words, short of doing this, simply disconnecting a wire or something would be no more fruitful that just leaving it turned off. Make sense? So, if the compressor is there and connected, the problem is thatsomethinh just dosn't work....
Check this first and report back, we'll go from there...