Any good trade in tanks? Help me decide

I'm looking to trade in my shitty VK (the maurbrecher) for something else. I'm F2P apart from occasional premium tank on sale every other year so I'm not interested in the ones where I need to run premium consumables and directives just to be competitive.

My choices are mainly:
– Somua SM: I love french tanks especially the autoloaders with the AMX 50 100 being my favourite tank in the game. Wanted this for some time already but I fear it will be too similar to the tech tree variants. Also I have a Liberte for crew training anyway.
– T-44-100: I actually like the T-44 and I'm looking for a russian MT for crew training. Only problem is this is very expensive and the crew layout doesn't match
– T-54 mod 1: Well this is shittier from
what I heard but WAYYY cheaper (i can get it for like 1/3 of the price) and the layout matches the top MTs
– Defender: I love my IS-4 and brawling is one of my fave playstyles but I already have russian HT trainers
– Lowe: IT'S SEXY AF IDC IF IT'S NOT META

Yeah but overall I'm considering the practicality of training crews and being F2P friendly (good at earning credits and little to no gold spamming or additional spending needed). I'm pretty sure thoigh that there are other trade in tanks worth looking at.

If you guys were a player with limited gold to spend and not a lot of premium tanks, which one from the trade in pool would you be going for?