Volkswagen and its Audi and Skoda units will recall 850,000 vehicles because of faulty ignition coils, Bloomberg News reported.

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According to the news agency, VW said on Tuesday that the ignition coils “have been experiencing a higher-than-normal failure rate.”

Other reports on Tuesday said the affected coils are installed on VW Group engines with direct ignition – an individual coil fitted to each spark plug.

According to Bloomberg News, when the VW coils fail, the check engine light/malfunction indicator lamp blinks, vehicle performance can become rough, and the engine can lose some power.

VW will replace the coils on all 2001 and 2002 model year cars equipped with certain engines, Bloomberg News said.

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According to Bloomberg and other reports, the affected cars are equipped with various turbocharged 1.8 litre engines, including the Audi TT and A4 and the Volkswagen Golf/GTI, Jetta/Bora, New Beetle and Passat. The US recall alone covers roughly 536,000 vehicles, Bloomberg said.

The news agency said the recall also includes vehicles equipped with the Passat W8 engine, all Volkswagens equipped with the 2.8 liter VR6 and Audi’s three-litre V6 engine.

Early production 2003 models are also affected, Bloomberg News added.

“We know that some ignition coils installed in our cars are not up to our high quality standards,” said Gerd Klauss, president and chief executive of Volkswagen’s American sales arm, told Bloomberg News. “The right thing to do is to fix every single car with these coils by replacing them whether they are broken yet or not.”