My GXE's rear has lowered itself and the struts are very hard. Will replacing the struts restore the ride height or is it also time for new springs? 350k miles, maybe 3rd set of rear struts.

 

I hear people say springs sag but I've always been skeptical of that on modern cars. Maybe a car up north seeing a lot of rust damage and fatigue it's common, but normally I would say no.

In my experience saggy rears on 3rd gens is due to the strut mount. They tend to compress over the years as they go bad which lowers the rear.

Are your rear strut mounts original or have they been replaced with each strut job?

Also, something I've done on my Intrax rears to quiet them down some is to wrap the top few coils in some clear tubing I bought at Home Depot.



This of course inherently raises the spring a bit. But it's a PITA to feed onto the spring. You could certainly do the same on the stockers. Or if you didn't want to fool with another strut job and are worried purely about the aesthetics just install some of these on the rear:

 

I think the mounts might have been replaced once before, maybe in '03. So good thought I will make sure the shop replaces the mounts this time and see if that fixes it.