Erm - I am not a journo, and I can assure you it IS a facelift. The floorpan is identical. The firewall is identical, the front subframe is identical, the rear subframe is identical, the rear suspension is identical. See where I am going.
Keep going
,one of them is slightly wrong and your slowly running out of things the same lol.
The thing is when you dig down, and i noticed you chose your choices and words carefully
theres more that has changed than not. So its far more new than is not.
Hell i could disect the mk2 golf part by part compared to the mk1 and come up with more thats the same than changed but no one calls that a facelift, (not nowadays anyway).
I normally agree with your posts especially the technical ones, this time I think I will agree to disagree on this one.