While their new series of television spots remind us how safe it is to ride in their German engineered vehicles, and that not every Jetta owner is a yoga freak, Volkswagen has yet to overcome the reputation for having not so reliable cars. They’ve made huge strides in recent years in improving quality, but this latest report of having 34,000 Passats recalled can’t help their public image.

It seems that Passats built between April and May of last year could be suffering from “clutch problems”. Those of you with automatic transmissions appear to be safe, but if you happen to be rocking a Passat with a 2-liter TDI engine and six-speed manual gearbox, you may want to make a trip to your local service department to ensure that you aren’t affected.

This isn’t new, either, because the same problem has been identified with certain batches of other Volkswagens, including the Golf, Golf Plus, Jetta, and Touareg.