Couple no cost things you can look at. I am not familiar with the exact layout of this engine, but. German and some British cars are notorious for rubber parts failing. Now I am assuming there are accordion boots between the air box, MAF sensor and throttle bodies. Physically remove the boots, turn them over and inspect each one very carefully. It is common to have very small or possibly large splits in the pleats of the boots. They remain closed and look fine. But when you first accelerate, the engine torques and pulls on the boot (s), opening a split and allowing air to bypass the MAF sensor. It will act just like a bad accelerator pump on a carb car. Pull the boots apart and look in the pleats. If everything looks good, a defective MAF sensor would be my next item to deal with. The fact that the engine runs better with it disconnected, makes me think the sensor is skewed lean. If it is using a Ford sensor, that is fairly common on them. Good luck with it.
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