I was looking at a few Youtube videos, of WWII tanks. The Italians seem to have built some of the worse tanks of WWII-underpowered, thin armor, small guns. they were so weak that they were no match for even older allied tanks-a British Valentine tank could destroy the Italian tank at maximum range.
The Italians had a reasonably competent industrial base-why were they still producing such inferior tanks, well into WWII? They looked to be fine against lightly armed African/Ethiopian troops, but against modern allied tanks, they were hopeless.
The men who manned them must have been very brave.
We tend to lump Italy in with German, France and the UK but in fact they weren’t nearly as industrialized as you might have thought. They didn’t have the factories to build large vehicles like tanks, and their designs weren’t forward thinking enough to allow for upgrades and improvements. They still used rivets when other countries were using welds, and most of the good steel went to the Navy instead. Poor design, poor manufacturing and poor planning… from a relatively poor country. Mussolini was no Hitler.
Made by Fiat? Just a guess.
You also have to remember, Italy was essentially out of the war by the middle of 1943.
They had the Carro Armato P 40 just started in production by that time, and it would have been OK vs Shermans, with a slightly better gun, but worse armor. The Italians only figured on their army being used against lower tech force, like the Abyssinians, Greece and Yugoslavia.
Vs the early Crusader tanks, the Italians tanks werent all that bad.
The German Tiger tank was probably the best tank of WWII. It was also one of the worst things that Germany could have produced. That may seem a little counter-intuitive, so let me explain.
Put an American Sherman tank and a German Tiger face to face. Go ahead and let the Sherman fire first if you want. It’s underpowered gun can’t penetrate the front armor of the Tiger. The Tiger on the other hand, will put a round in through the front and out through the back of the Sherman.
The Russian T-34 fared a bit better against the Tiger, but it also had a lot of difficulty penetrating the Tiger’s heavy armor, and the Tiger’s big powerful gun could blast big holes in a T-34 as well.
So clearly the Tiger wins, right? Wrong.
The Tigers took a huge amount of resources to produce. Because of this, Germany couldn’t make enough of them to be effective on the battlefield. It took on average about four of the inferior Shermans to kill a single Tiger, but the Americans could easily produce ten times as many Shermans as the Germans could make Tigers. That means that the Americans had over twice as many tanks as they needed to defeat the so-called superior Tigers.
The real winner of the war was the Russian T-34. Even though it was inferior in just about every measurable way to the Tiger, the T-34’s were designed to be rugged and producable. They fared better than the Shermans against Tigers, and the T-34’s just rolled in wave after wave across the border. They completely overwhelmed the German tanks.
If Germany hadn’t produced the Tigers, they would have been able to produce a lot more of their “inferior” tanks, and in higher numbers, those would have had a much better impact for Germany on the battlefield. So choosing to produce the Tigers was a bad thing overall for Germany, even though by just about every measure the Tiger was the best tank of the war.
So what does all of this mean for Italy? Well, they had fewer resources and less skill and experience. Without as much money to throw into their tank programs, they could have made better tanks, but then they would have faced the same problem that Germany faced with their Tigers. They wouldn’t have been able to make enough of them. So instead they went for lighter tanks with lighter armor. They weren’t exactly the best tanks of the war, but Italy thought that they were “good enough”, all things considered. They’d had some experience with lighter armor in North Africa and it had worked out well for them, so that’s the direction they chose to go in.
Italy didn’t have the resources or experience to produce something that could compete with the big guys. Italy’s tanks did get better as the war progressed, but they started out way behind everyone else and since other tanks were getting better too, Italy never quite caught up.
And yes, they were made by Fiat, so there’s that. 
Great analysis! Anecdotally, any time I’ve played one of the simulation wargames as Germany, I’ve always done best if I concentrate on the 75mm gun Panzer IV variants early, and disregard the assault guns, Tigers and Panthers, for exactly the reason you mention- I can produce a LOT more of them than the other kinds.
And another thing about the Italians is that Italy on the whole isn’t really tank country like say… most of the rest of Europe. Maybe the area surrounding Turin, Milan, Venice and Bologna, and the heel of the boot roughly between Lecce and Foggia is tank country, but the rest is mountainous and not terribly suitable for armored warfare, so I don’t know how fixated on tanks and armored warfare the Italian Army really was.
And of course, tanks aren’t supposed to roll out into the middle of nowhere and get into one on one tank duels with other tanks. Tanks are supposed to support infantry, infantry is supposed to support tanks, and tanks are supposed to support each other.
Tanks aren’t designed to be impervious to anti-tank weaponry, like the main cannon on a tank. They’re supposed to be impervious to machine guns and small arms and shrapnel and barbed wire, so they can use their machine guns and cannons to take out strongpoints that would be difficult for infantry to take out.
So it doesn’t matter so much if your tank is a crappy tank that can’t fight against other tanks. That’s not its job.
It’s worth noting that the main Italian tank in the North African war, the M13/40, wasn’t actually that bad for 1940-1941. In particular, the OP has the wrong impression of gun size --the M13/40 had an unusually large gun for the period.
Apparently the (lack of) crew training and logistical support were a big part of the problem.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Strengths and weaknesses
The M13/40 was a conventional light tank of the early war period, similar in capability to other Vickers-derived designs such as the Polish 7TP and Soviet T-26. With a weight of 13 tons, it carried armour comparable to its opponents of 1940–41, its 47 mm long barrelled gun was more than a match for the British tanks of 1940–41 which were similarly armoured to the M13 but carried 2pdr (40 mm) guns with shorter range and inferior ballistic performance, in the same age most German tanks were armed with 20 mm or 37 mm guns and the gun/armour race led to adoption of weapons of 50 mm calibre only during 1942. The adoption of the 47 mm long gun was probably the best feature of the M13. Due to its relatively large calibre the main gun’s HE round was also very useful against towed guns and infantry and eliminated or at least mitigated, for the first years of war, the need for a dedicated support vehicle such as the Wehrmacht had in the early mark Panzer IV and Stug III. The diesel engine was an advantage, and the simplicity of production suited the state of Italian industry.
However, the tank also had many grave shortcomings which severely hampered its effectiveness on the battlefield: the engine provided good range, but not great power and reliability. The M13’s engine was the same as the M11’s, but the newer tank was heavier, which resulted in lower speed and more strain on the powerplant. The suspension and tracks were reliable, but resulted in relatively low speeds, not much better than infantry tanks such as the Matilda. Armament was sufficient for 1940–41 but did not keep up with the increased armour and firepower on Allied or German tanks. The method of construction, using rivets, was outdated. Most tanks of the era were switching to the use of welding for construction, since rivets can shear off when hit, becoming additional projectiles inside the tank. The two-man turret was less efficient in combat than the three-man turrets used in many other tanks of the era. Radios were not fitted to many tanks.
Italian historians Filippo Cappellano and Pier Paolo Battistelli have pointed out that the disappointing performance of the tank early in the war, where its armament was by no means inadequate, can be ascribed to its crews’ almost complete lack of training (the first tank training centre would be created only in 1941) and experience, coupled to the lack of tactical doctrine, the lack of radios and the fact that many units were hastily created and sent to the battlefield, and also to the lack of armoured recovery vehicles; they state that, while the training and experience of the Italian crews improved during the conflict, their tanks’ technical disadvantage worsened. In such a condition, they express marvel that the Italian tanks were able to fight for as long as they did.[5]
[/QUOTE]
The armor was within typical thickness ranges for the period, but the riveted construction was a big weakness when taking hits.
Which is probably one of the examples Arthur C. Clarke had in mind when he wrote his story “Superiority” Superiority (short story) - Wikipedia http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133476/1439133476___5.htm
Best cluck for your buck would likely be the Jagdpanzer 38 (Sd.Kfz. 138/2), later known as Hetzer .
What are you, the ghost of Gen. Lesley McNair? You just forgot to mention tank destroyers.
Lightweight. 
Get a Panzer VIII Maus.
Looking at the pictures in the Wikipedia link the use of rivets is disturbing. I bet that was Spall central when it was hit.
I said “best cluck for your buck” not “incredible waste of steel that will be carpetbombed into scrap within an hour of showing up”. If it can make it to the front. 
Just to rehash some of the point that always comes up in these threads.
- Tank on tank combat is rare. Most tank losses come from AT guns or infantry action
- The book ‘Death Traps’ is terribly one sided in particular. Heavy Sherman losses are mostly due to their being on the offensive, trying to attack dug in/concealed defenses. When the Germans launched counter attacks they often suffered massive losses themselves.
- When tanks actually did fight, much like Air to Air combat, the winner is usually he who spotted the other guy and fired first.
Finally, you really can’t exaggerate how messed up Nazi production was, especially when it comes to tanks.
Jump to 26 minutes in this presentation.
Key fact? 10,000 man hours to build a Sherman. 300,000 to build a Tiger.
Also the T-34/76 wasn’t that great. It was the T-34/85, which was different enough some armies would have called it a new tank that really was the best tank of the war.
My plot how to win WWII early? Take the entire unedited film for "America- the Arsenal of Democracy" which shows tanks being run off assembly lines, etc, show it to several thousand non-hardcore Nazi German POWs, and then send them back.
This I can’t agree enough with.
This, however, I have to disagree with. There were too many cases during the war where either a) engagement ranges started so far out that making a hit with the first shot was wildly improbable or b) the tanks were so lopsidedly unmatched that unless the first shot was from the flank or rear at short range in ambush, spotting the enemy first wasn’t very much of an advantage. Just to cite the usual suspects, even armed with a 76mm gun the Sherman couldn’t penetrate the frontal armor of the Panther at anything but point blank range. The T-34 and KV-1 proved to be all but impervious to any German tank or anti-tank gun from any angle during Barbarossa. Pretty much the same held true for both the Matilda II and the Char B1 in France 1940 where they were only stopped at Arras by employing 105mm artillery and 88mm anti-aircraft guns in a direct fire role.
Related trivia: many of the highest scoring fighter aces of WWII didn’t use tracer rounds.
I don’t follow you. The T-34/76 (and the KV) scared the shit out of the Germans, who hadn’t suspected the Soviets had tanks anywhere near that heavy. The T-34/85 was just a T-34 upgunned with an 85mm. Saying it was different enough from the T-34/76 that some armies would have called it a new tank is the same as saying the M4A3E8 was different enough from the M4 that some armies would have called it a new tank.
No, there was numerous research done about this. By both America and the Uk, both during and post war analysis. The results were unequivacal. He who fires first has a massive advantage.
Think about it. If you fire first, you’ve got a decent chance of hitting your target, again remember most tank combat isn’t at 2 km range especially in western europe, and ending the fight right there. If you miss you can adjust your aim and try again. Meanwhile the opponent, even if he knows he’s under attack, which isn’t guaranteed is playing catch up, and is quite likely to be shaken as well knowing he’s under fire.
As to the ‘shot bouncing off’ again we’re drifting into History channel territory here. The resistance of tanks to enemy fire is often wildly exaggerated. Yes the KV1 could bounce 37mm AT guns, or short barrel 75mm Panzer IV fire. Yes the Sherman probably couldn’t kill a Tiger from the front. But to concentrate on the Sherman vs Panther. The Sherman was perfectly capable of killing the Panther. Especially with the later improved AP rounds. It’s worth noting German steel quality dropped precipitously during the war as well due to shortages of the required raw materials for high grade steel. Being especially prone to shattering/spalling under fire.
It’s also worth noting that the whole send 5 Shermans to take out a German tank is probably more that a platoon of 5 tanks (yes i know, but in most times and places) was the smallest operational tank unit. You encounter a German tank holding up an advance. You send the whole platoon after it.
There’s substantial changes. The Hull is up-armoured, new optics, filters, improved gears and substantial improvement in build quality. It no longer leaked when it rained for example, not a joke.
The biggest difference was the turret however. Which was a complete redesign, much larger including a radio and most importantly, making it a 3 man turret. Previously the tank commander had to be his own gunner. Which is a terrible idea when you think about it. The commander has to maintain situational awareness and direct his tank . The gunner has to focus on his target thought his sights. These are mutually incompatible goals. Splitting that task and adding the radio was what really turned the T34 into a great tank.
So did it deserve a new name, not necessarily, but it would have been perfectly reasonable to do so.
Period example. The British Cavalier tank is a redesigned Crusader. New turret and more armour, same engine, transmission and other features. They could have called it the Crusader MkIV but they went with a new designation.
Just a quick thought. Penetrating the frontal armour - or any of the armour, really - is a great thing, but not completely necessary. Isn’t it enough to knock out the running gear (tracks, idlers, road wheels)? Even if the crew is still alive and shooting, it seems unlikely they’ll be terribly effective, being unable to move.
Do you think Hitler would have listened to them? He wouldn’t listen to his own generals!