I noticed a thin piano wire with an eye-hook at the end was laying along the bottom of the engine compartment after I opened up the hatch. I suspect it is the pull wire for the engine compartment latch. I can't figure out how to re-attach it. Anyone had a similar issue? How did you re-attach it?

On further investigation, it appears that is a back-up manual release wire that threads into the tail light mounting well. The normal electronic release works fine.
I was able to slip the eye-hook over the post that is also used by the electronic release mechanism and put some duct tape over it to hopefully hold it in place.

 

It's supposed to loop in behind the taillight housing so you can pop the tail light out and pull it to release the latch.

 

That whole concept is flawed as you can't access the screws to pop the taillight out without, yup, you guessed it, having the engine lid open - doh.

Remove the driver's side taillight, add an extension wire to the factory one and route it down through the hole in the body behind the taillight housing so you can access it between the bumper and exhaust from underneath the car. Then you'll actually be able to use it as a manual release for the engine lid when the switch doesn't work.

 

Here's what I did:

1. Pull the release wire back into the engine compartment.
2. Remove the license plate and note the large hole that looks into the engine compartment.
3. Feed the release wire from the engine compartment through that hole in the bumper and out to the license plate area.
4. Once the wire is fed through, pull on it and verify that the latch opens.
5. Since now the wire is quite long, loop it to a reasonable length and secure the loop with a small plastic cable tie.
6. I used a piece of Gorilla Tape to fasten the looped cable to the back of the license plate.
7. Re-install the license plate.