Current update on my GTI. Took the car back to the shop over a week ago and I’m so happy to report that the smell is entirely gone now! The shop claims they found nothing wrong and all they did was “clean” the engine a little bit. Not sure if they’re being transparent with me, maybe covering up something they missed— at this point I really don’t care, just as long as my car is back to normal. On a scale from 1-10, 1 being normal and 10 being undrivable, the smell went from an 8 back to 1 literally overnight.