A4 almost left me stranded today
 

So the wife and I were heading out of town on I-95 and about 80 miles from the house, when my car began jerking badly. Never surging, but felt like the engine was cutting out (although electrical stayed fine). It quickly got worse, and I pulled into the breakdown lane. I figured out I could go about 20, pushing as lightly as possible on the gas, and I was able to limp along until the next exit.

Nothing obviously wrong under the hood, so I called a tow truck company to pick us up. When the guy arrives and sees the car he says "Oh, its an Audi....I've seen this before"....He gets in, turns the car on (its barely able to idle now), and cuts the steering wheel hard from stop to stop a couple of times. The engine now seems to run fine, so the guy and I take it out for a drive, still no issue, so we decide to head back to the house forgoing about a $400 tow. We make it about an hour, and it starts happening again. I pull over, do the steering wheel thing, and go on to make it to the house without any further issue.

The car is off to the shop this week, but in the mean time -- anyone have any idea what happened, and how cycling the steering wheel had any impact? The car is an '04 A4 1.8 with about 100k on it.

After reading your first paragraph I was going to say that it might be a failed coil pack, but the thing with the steering wheel is just weird. Never heard of this.

Same here! I thought fuel pressure regulator, but steering wheel?!