@m4in - totally agree.
Of the five VW’s I’ve owned from new, most - if not all - of them were bought pretty close to the end of the model life of those cars. They were still new, they had the new car smell, they had a three year new car warranty, any teething troubles (if there were any) had been sorted with those models and when the time comes to sell them, I‘ve never been penalised on price because I have they an ‘old’ model - I take good care of my cars and they were all pretty much immaculate when I sold them.
As for the mk8 facelift (the mk8.5?) - with facelifts of previous VW models, it’s not unknown for VW to cut costs and penny pinch to help offset the cost of some of the changes, so some of the features that owners like and appreciate on the current model might not be there on the facelift model (VW dropped dual zone climate control on some models of the mk5 Golf and substituted it with standard air con - my mk5 Golf came with the latter but it did the job just fine). The facelift might also be pig ugly
(admittedly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder).
With my current 2020 Polo GTI+, the facelift Polo model range was unveiled six months after I took delivery of my car. Did it bother me? Not in the slightest. Did I wish I’d waited? No. Did I want one? Not at all - there was very little about the facelift model that I preferred over my car and my opinion hasn’t changed. The facelift also cost quite a bit more than I paid for my car, so I’d have been spending significantly more money for a car that would’ve offered very little extra.
Existing model or forthcoming facelift? A bit of a first world problem IMHO.