I’ll start with the Porsche 997, the 996 looked alright imo, but it looks “like a 90s Porsche”, the 997 made it look sleeker and more modern. Still looks good today.
As for cars that looked worse after a facelift? Maybe the facelifted 6th gen Camaro? The 6th gen looked great pre-facelift, but they did something weird with the headlights and now it looks so-so…
The z33 to z34 was a major change. For better or worse though, they still shared the same aesthetic motif, so I can understand where the sentiment comes from.
For me, the biggest electronic change was adding automatic rev matching, which was the first time ever on a production car.
It blew my mind the first time I drove one. However, it’s been adopted by all manufacturers a decade later so many people forget what it was like before.
People rightfully focus on the GT-R during that era more, but people forget how much of a benchmark setting car the 370z was in 2008.