Got my car back today! I’ll have to go back to get some things tweaked but overall I’m so happy!
Absolutely great experience at Lou’s Care Care (Syracuse), really top notch. Friendly, helpful, really accommodating to my OCD, and overall they did a stellar job.
yay taller than stock and narrow snow tires 
In that pic take a close look at the rear bumper to see the little issue that’ll have to be worked out. There’s a bulge in the new bumper (it’s OEM, very strange) and along the bottom edge near the left corner there’s a defect. I don’t think the latter can be just fixed, I think they might have to do a new bumper + repaint.
Also they threw away my ‘323F’ badge that I had to have hand imported from the Netherlands (i.e. the person from the Netherlands brought it to me in Canada). I gave them a list of parts to keep and someone must not have looked at it. The other other part I cared about was the broken tail lamp. I wanted it for an LED retrofit project I’m working on. I only have a spare passenger side light, but I can just mirror my work on that and install it one night when I’m done.
I’m so glad to have her back 
I don’t like the way the shaved hatch looks in photos though. There’s a very slight body line that connects to that piece above the license plate, but from most angles in a photo you can’t see it at all, it’s too slight to notice in the reflection. In person I love the way it looks, I really wasn’t sure if I’d be happy with that.
The 6 holes were properly welded shut for $128 (including the extra labor to prep the liftgate for paint after that) not including the paint since that already had to be done.
Now I just need to find a few places local to get some work done. I can get a discount at Krown Lakeshore near Toronto to do an undercoating but don’t really feel like driving that far. My roommate had his car done last year at Delta Sonic but the coverage was really inconsistent when looking at the car on a lift.
Then I want to just hand a shop my car + a new turbo manifold gasket, downpipe gasket (2-piece downpipe) and some new OEM studs, bolts, and nuts and have them fix my exhaust leaks. They go away when the car is warmed up but are annoying (and toxic) until that point. I’ll probably go to CDI for that, even though they’re a ‘euro’ shop. I’ve heard great stuff about their work and my roommate had very extensive routine maintenance done on his Volvo there and they did a great job with it. I think it was like 1500 but it was a LOT of stuff that got replaced, it was a great deal considering.
sorry for the long post just so excited to be back in an exciting car