VW Group recalls 800,000 Volkswagen Touaregs and Porsche Cayennes

UPDATE 5:30pm 27/03/2016: Porsche Cars Australia has confirmed that of the more than 400,000 Cayennes affected globally, 6168 are involved Down Under.

"Affected vehicle owners will be notified by Porsche and advised to contact their authorised Porsche dealer for a free of charge workshop appointment which will take less than half an hour," said PCA.

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Volkswagen Group has announced that it is recalling 391,000 VW Touaregs and 409,477 Porsche Cayennes because it has identified a fault with the pedal box on both large luxury SUVs.

Totalling more than 800,000, the vehicles thought to suffer from the potential fault were built between 2011 and 2016, says Volkswagen.

The problem that prompted the recall is a “circlip [that] could be loose on the bearing bracket for the pedals”, which was "found during internal inspections and remedied in ongoing series", said Porsche.

It’s not known how potentially serious any failure of said circilp could be, but Porsche claims the recall is a “purely precautionary measure”.

The sportscar-maker also added in an official statement that there had been no reports of accidents or injuries caused by issues concerning faulty pedals.

Volkswagen Australia is yet to announce how many Touaregs will be hit by the recall Down Under, but owners of both cars should follow European advice of contacting their local dealer to see if their car is affected.

If your Cayenne or Touareg does have the fault the good news is the fix is said to take less than half an hour and will be free of charge.

The new fault pedal mechanism follows two other recent recalls issued by the troubled car-maker.

Last week, in Europe, more than 177,000 Passats were recalled over an electrical fault and last month 680,000 Volkswagen vehicles were recalled over faulty airbags.

Of course all three recalls still pale in significance beside the Dieselgate scandal the German car-maker is still recovering from.

Despite setting aside billions to compensate, fix the cars affected and pay huge fines, some analysts now estimate the total cost of the emissions to the Volkswagen Group could exceed $50 billion.