"The turret design was too big and too tall, the schmallturm fixed this quite a bit but it was still lacking in side armor vs its contemporaries not to mention it nnever saw use."
- Panther's turret wasn't tall at all and best of all most of its front side is covered by thick gun mantlet. Designers had to make compromises and having thick frontal armour and less in sides is IMHO better option than having a mediocre armour all around which just about every gun can penetrate. Panther's turret and hull/superstructure were giving frontally more than enough protection from Allied guns except 17pdr and some rare special ammunitions like APDS.
"The double torsion bar suspension seesm like a huge waste of space andv weight. Additnally the interleaved roadwheels just make everythiung haevier and more complex and prone to jamming."
- Torsion bar suspension is durable solution; it doesn't take that much space and it's also well covered from battle damage.
Here is StuG III's suspension visible, as you can see the torsion bars didn't take that much space..
Also interleaved roadwheels were sound invention; weight distribution of Panther and Tiger was much better than in any contemporaries. Weight per track area contacting ground isn't everything; You have to also remember that track is flexible and bigger wheels are spreading the weight to wider track area. Also those roadwheels gave pretty good protection to lower hull so even if the wheels were heavy the hull could be made lighter. For example Panther G had 50mm upper hull sides sloped at 30dgr but lower hull was only 40mm and wasn't sloped at all.
"Now I do like the panther but i see these as design errors thatr made panther seriously overweight for its armor and firepower."
- Panther's were bit heavy but like I said the frontal armour was one of the best of the any tanks used in the ww2 and the gun was just as good as Tiger-E's 88L56; bit better under 1500m and bit worse at the ranges exceeding 1500m. Oh and trajectory of 75L70 was in its own class compared to 88L56.
"oh and as for schmallturm and the 88/L71 this would have given huge internal space problemns in handling ammo so rof would have dropped greatly."
-Remember Panther really was a heavy medium tank; 88L71 was a bit too big and powerful gun for relatively small turret and in most cases a overkill. Frankly speaking Russians didn't had any gun as powerfull as 88L71 was, British 17pdr was having 25% less penetration power and American 90mm was about the same with 17pdr.
75L70 had about as much penetration power as Russian 122mm, British 17pdr and US 90mm had.
