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# Volkswagen's biggest recall since Dieselgate has landed in the middle of the biggest shake-up in its history
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/volkswagen-recall-4-million-cars-turnaround-plan/
- Published: 2026-09-28T03:45:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-28T03:44:59.000Z
- Description: Volkswagen is recalling about 4 million cars over a steering screw while it works through a plan to take out factory capacity, tens of thousands of jobs and possibly four German plants.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

Volkswagen is in the middle of making itself smaller, and on Friday it also had to call back about 4 million cars. The recall covers VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat models, and it is the group's biggest since Dieselgate. For scale, the Dieselgate recall covered 8.5 million cars across Europe.

## A screw, a regulator and two different totals

The fault is a screw in the steering system that can corrode. Left unchecked, VW says, it could affect the steering over the long term, and in the worst case, Euronews reports, a bolt holding the steering gear could break and the driver could lose control. VW calls the recall precautionary, says the repair takes no more than an hour, and would not say what it will cost. Germany's road traffic authority, the KBA, still has the case marked as under investigation, and says it knows of no incidents involving damage or injury.

The 4 million is not the regulator's number. The KBA's own list comes to about 2.9 million VW and Audi cars, and the rest is Handelsblatt's reporting on Skoda and Seat, where Seat confirmed its count and Skoda did not comment. The VW models, among them the Golf, Tiguan, Touran and Caddy, were built between September 2013 and July 2024, and the Audi Q3 is on the list too.

## Half a million cars of capacity, twice

The recall is a repair. The plan is a rebuild. VW's supervisory board approved it unanimously on 3 September, and it starts from a plain mismatch: the group can build more cars than it can sell. Tariffs have cost it billions of euros in the US, demand for electric cars has been patchy, and in China, where well over 100 new competitors have appeared, it has already cut its workforce from 90,000 to 70,000.

So the plan takes out a further 500,000 cars a year of factory capacity in China and the same again in Europe. The cuts were worked out across around 170 group companies, and the result is about 50,000 more jobs on top of cuts already agreed, roughly half of them in Germany. Euronews puts the total at 100,000, about 15% of VW's staff worldwide, and calls it the largest restructuring the car industry has seen.

Germany is where it gets difficult. VW says it cannot guarantee competitive work for its Emden, Zwickau, Hannover and Neckarsulm plants from dates staggered between 2031 and 2034, and closing them would be the first time it has shut full-scale factories at home. The 2024 labour deal traded a first wave of 35,000 German layoffs for job guarantees until the end of the decade. IG Metall, Germany's biggest industrial union, is bound by a strike truce until 1 January 2027 and is looking for other ways to push back.

In Kariega, VW's plant employs more than 3,500 people and is the group's main Polo factory, the only one supplying Europe and Asia-Pacific. It built a record 17,009 cars in July. There is no indication yet of what the plan means for it.