Yes, the older pans had a much smoother surface. You can get that on new pans, though, too! A few minutes with an orbital sander (or a fair amount of elbow grease) will net you a similar finish.
This idea was rattling around in my head, so I took a 3M paint and rust stripper brush to my wife's trusty old Lodge skillet.* That knocked the patina off the surface of the pan pretty quickly, then I polished it up with some 60 grit sand paper on my orbital sander. 40 grit probably would have worked better, but 60 is what I had. I did two rounds of seasoning in the oven (Pre-heat, wipe with Crisco, two hours at 400 degrees).
Then it was time for the egg test. I cooked two eggs over easy. The eggs turned out perfectly. There is something about the connection of the eggs to the pan that makes cast-iron cooked eggs superior to eggs cooked in a non-stick pan. Now, there was a little bit of sticking. Not enough to create issues flipping the eggs, but it was there. Clean-up was easy, but did require some scraping with the spatula. There are a couple other little potential niggles. The surface is not perfectly smooth. There are still some pits from the sand casting that I couldn't sand out (hence why 40 grit might have been better, at least initially). But it is pretty darn smooth. Much improved over the original surface, but not as smooth as the factory finish on the Finex. Another is the patina on the cooking surface is a different color than the rest of the pan. I think this actually makes the pan look cooler, but not everyone might agree. Anyway, since we got the Finex the Lodge has been relegated to the camping equipment, and the functionality is much improved. So I'm call this an unqualified success.
To summarize, I love the Finex, but after sanding the Lodge, I wouldn't buy another Fixex. It really didn't take very much time to sand and re-season the Lodge. The sanding was 10-15 minutes, something like that, and other than the waiting around time, it took about the same amount of time for the seasoning.
*I thought it was my Lodge skillet, and she was not entirely pleased to see me sanding off the well-seasoned surface layer. I'll cook her an egg and see if that changes her mind.