Audi A5, Audi A6 Sportback E-Tron, Audi Q4 E-Tron, Audi Q4 Sportback E-Tron, Audi S5, Audi S6 Sportback E-Tron, model years 2025 to 2026. Filed by Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. and reported to NHTSA on 24 September 2025. 1,042 vehicles potentially affected.
What the notice says Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Volkswagen) is recalling certain 2025 GTI, Golf R, Audi A5, A6 Sportback E-Tron, S5, S6 Sportback E-Tron, 2026 Q4 Sportback E-Tron, and Q4 E-Tron vehicles. The torsion bar in one or both front seat belt retractors may have been damaged during production.
Is your vehicle included? Check with your VIN at NHTSA, or ask a dealer. This page is an independent copy of the notice, kept so you can see what changed after it was published. It is not the authority, and the authority’s own text is the one to act on.
Volkswagen's own number for this recall: 694T 69UM. That is the number on the owner letter and on the dealer paperwork. 25V638 is the number NHTSA gave the same campaign, and the number this page is filed under. They are one recall, written two ways.
What owners ask about this recall
- Which vehicles does recall 25V638 cover?
- Audi A5, Audi A6 Sportback E-Tron, Audi Q4 E-Tron, Audi Q4 Sportback E-Tron, Audi S5, Audi S6 Sportback E-Tron, Volkswagen Golf R, Volkswagen GTI, model years 2025-2026.
- What is wrong with them?
- Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Volkswagen) is recalling certain 2025 GTI, Golf R, Audi A5, A6 Sportback E-Tron, S5, S6 Sportback E-Tron, 2026 Q4 Sportback E-Tron, and Q4 E-Tron vehicles. The torsion bar in one or both front seat belt retractors may have been damaged during production.
- What can happen if it is not put right?
- In a crash, a damaged torsion bar in a retractor could fail. If this happens, the seat belt may not properly restrain an occupant during a crash, increasing the risk of injury.
- Is there a fix yet?
- Yes, and it is free. Dealers will replace one or both front seat belts, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed October 30, 2025, and October 31, 2025. Owners may contact Audi at 1-800-253-2834 or Volkswagen at 1-800-893-5298.
- What should I do now?
- Check your own vehicle by its VIN with NHTSA, which is the record to act on. Volkswagen calls this recall 694T 69UM, which is the number on the owner letter and the dealer paperwork.
Answered from the register this site holds. NHTSA is the record to act on.
What the authority says can happen if this is not fixed: “In a crash, a damaged torsion bar in a retractor could fail. If this happens, the seat belt may not properly restrain an occupant during a crash, increasing the risk of injury.”
affected
in the notice
caught
| Campaign | 25V638 |
|---|---|
| Filed by | Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. |
| System at fault | Seat Belts:Front:Retractor |
| Reported to NHTSA | 24 September 2025 |
| Model years | 2025-2026 |
| Vehicles named | AUDI A5, AUDI A6 SPORTBACK E-TRON, AUDI Q4 E-TRON, AUDI Q4 SPORTBACK E-TRON, AUDI S5, AUDI S6 SPORTBACK E-TRON, VOLKSWAGEN GOLF R, VOLKSWAGEN GTI |
What the notice says today
The defect
Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Volkswagen) is recalling certain 2025 GTI, Golf R, Audi A5, A6 Sportback E-Tron, S5, S6 Sportback E-Tron, 2026 Q4 Sportback E-Tron, and Q4 E-Tron vehicles. The torsion bar in one or both front seat belt retractors may have been damaged during production.
The consequence
In a crash, a damaged torsion bar in a retractor could fail. If this happens, the seat belt may not properly restrain an occupant during a crash, increasing the risk of injury.
The remedy
Dealers will replace one or both front seat belts, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed October 30, 2025, and October 31, 2025. Owners may contact Audi at 1-800-253-2834 or Volkswagen at 1-800-893-5298. Audi's number for this recall is 69UM; Volkswagen’s number for this recall is 694T. Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) involved in this recall will be searchable on NHTSA.gov beginning September 26, 2025.
What it said before
Nothing has changed while we have been watching. We last read the wording of this campaign on 17 September 2026, and it matched the copy we already held.
That copy hashes to 151012e7b4f73f795a0d6a26aee8bc4d…, so if it is ever edited the change is provable rather than a matter of memory.
This is one of 451 notices in the record whose component field names seat belts. Across that group the median wait before owners were written to was 48 days.
Last checked . No change has been recorded in the wording.
The same recall in other countries
This campaign carries a manufacturer code that also appears in another country’s register, which means the same defect was recalled there too.
- European Union: Safety Gate alert SR/01052/26, published 10 April 2026, raised by Germany (the Commission’s own page) (7 months after the American filing)
Matched on 69UM, the manufacturer’s own number for this campaign, which is the only field the registers share. Exact match, nothing paired on brand and date. The two dates are adjacent instruments rather than the same one, so a difference of a day or two means nothing.
How often the two countries file on the same day · The European alerts
The models named here, across their whole recall history
- Audi A5 recalls: 18 US campaigns
- Audi Q4 E-Tron recalls: 7 US campaigns
- Audi Q4 Sportback E-Tron recalls: 3 US campaigns
- Audi S5 recalls: 14 US campaigns
- Volkswagen Golf R recalls: 16 US campaigns
- Volkswagen GTI recalls: 21 US campaigns
How to cite this record
Quoting the wording on this page means quoting a version, so the date belongs in the citation:
CarsMultiverse, recall 25V638, wording as read on 17 September 2026. https://carsmultiverse.com/recall/25v638/
The copy quoted above hashes to 151012e7b4f73f795a0d6a26aee8bc4d…. If the notice is reworded later, that fingerprint will not match, which is how a reader checks that the quotation was of the version we say it was.
The cross-border matches used on this site are deposited as a citable dataset: doi:10.5281/zenodo.22087136. The recall wording itself is published by the national authority named above and is theirs, not ours.
The recall record and its wording are published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and are US Government public domain. The dated archive, the comparison and any before-and-after above are CarsMultiverse. How fresh every engine behind this page is, is public on the status page. To check a specific vehicle, use NHTSA’s own VIN lookup.
Other Volkswagen notices we hold
- 26V473: 2024-2026 Atlas Cross Sport and Atlas
- 26V321: 2024 Tiguan
- 26V258: 2025-2026 Taos
- 26V185: 2025 Jetta and Taos
- 26V138: 2025-2026 Jetta
- 26V030: 2023-2025 ID
- 26V028: 2023-2024 ID
- 25V854: 2025 Tiguan
All 272 Volkswagen campaigns we hold · Every manufacturer in the record
The fingerprint of this notice
We take a SHA-256 of each of the three blocks of text the authority publishes and keep the first eight characters. As we last read campaign 25V638 on 23 August 2026, they were:
- Defect summary
e23ed7d0 - Consequence
19f20198 - Remedy
72162627
We first read this notice on 21 August 2026. It has not moved since. If it ever does, these characters will not match, and the change will be dated here.
The wording we hold for 25V638 · how the whole register is watched
This notice names one vehicle among several registers that have written about it. Every notice this site holds for the Volkswagen Golf R, in all seven, is kept on that vehicle's own page, with the newest in each.
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Owners of these cars
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