The 2001 Lander was a copy, in many ways, of Polar Lander.

Squyres was 6 weeks away from delivering a calibrated payload for it ( that eventually evolved into the Athena payload onboard MER).

When the 2001 lander was cancelled in the wake of the MPL failure, it was mothballed. Most of the hardware was ready to go.

Pete Smith comes along and proposes getting it out of storage, bolting new versions of the MPL instruments on it, and sending it North, and called it Phoenix.

Phoenix is the 2001 lander, with different instruments

There were no airbags for the planned '01 mission - I think you must be confusing it with something else.

One odd factoid. The decent engines for the 2001 lander actually got unbolted and were used by the Mars Recon Orbiter for Mars Orbit Insertion. Phoenix had to replace them.