AC and HP
 

I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to technical things about cars, but one thing I have never heard a response that I put faith in is How much HP does the AC compressor use when running...and it is pretty linear or does the loss increase with RPM ?

Ans is this the norm in most cars in good working order or is the parasitic HP loss significantly different across other types of cars.

I don't know either, but when running the AC in my Boxster it is less noticable than in my other cars

I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a specification on this and the best that I could find was a reference of ~5hp. The Boxster a/c unit is rather small compared to some cars because of the small volume of the passenger interior. This is probably why the parasitic drag on the engine is not nearly as noticable as other cars. Wish that I had an actual technical spec to share - will keep looking.

I am far from a AC expert but I read somewhere ( ? ) that most wobble plate compressors only consume 3-5 hp. Much different than the piston type back in the 70's.

Concur, I was thinking that my Boxster is the first car I have owned that I could barley tell the difference when the AC was on. My first nice car was a 1973 Dodge Charger when out of high school....it seemed that the AC took 1/3 of the power away from the engine....and it was new at the time