Seems ironic to me that the Panther was meant to be a cost effective vehicle in real life, but in game is the least cost effective in its class.
It wasn't really cost effective given how much resources, money and over engineering was pumped into it.
It wasn't as expensive as tiger, but it was far from cost effective in other sense then being able to knock tanks out from safe distance.
And guess what, IRL when you have compared its cost and performance, it was still much more expensive then allied tanks.