So this was weird. Last evening driving home the '93 244 was driving very well as always. There was a stretch of lights with lots of stop and go, and then opened up on the freeway for about 1/2 mile to the next exit. While on the freeway as the car accelerated to speed, I thought the car started to feel sluggish and unresponsive, right out of the blue. Indeed, the exit is a steep uphill affair, and as I exited to take the hill, the car just stopped all acceleration. It's an auto so basically leaving it in drive the car still went forward at about 3 or 4 miles per hour. It kept running and did not die. I also heard a clanking noise from under the hood a couple times - not loud at all, but audible. At the top of the first hill I put it in park and left it running with the hood up. I couldn't see anything amiss. There was about 1/3 of a tank so it wasn't running out of gas. The road leveled out and there were a couple more uphills, flat spots, and downhills before I could reach the closest service station. The symptoms remained the same the whole way there, except going uphill at a couple spots I actually had to get out of the car while in drive and help push it a long. Once at the service station I filled up the tank (10 gallons) and let the engine rest for a few minutes (although the temp. gauge was reading normal, it was very hot and humid weather and the A/C had been running for about 45 min.). At this point I fired her up again and after maybe 2 presses of the pedal the engine began responding normally and I drove home as if nothing had happened. Same thing this morning, drove beautifully.

As a backdrop, it's only been about 4000 miles since a complete service/tune-up was completed.

Does anyone recognize these symptoms or have any suggestions of what to check? I'm just confused because if the car is running normally again, how will I recognize the problem? I guess what can I do/be on the lookout for should the symptoms return?