why does the lowe have better frontal turret armor than the entire maus line?

I started grinding out the maus line recently and had a low skill crew but I remembered I had Lowe rental with 42 games on it. I'm like "it's some old premium tank, probably shitty but I'll just grind some credits and crew XP, nice."

First game, 5k damage, 5 kills. Wait, Lowe is good? Take a closer look in tanks.gg. Turret is full of 300-500mm sloped bullshit armor, 10 degrees depression, cupola is tiny, gun is amazing despite low dpm.

It made me think about the VK100.01 at the same tier and its big turret cupola weakness and the same gun as the lowe but with nearly 40mm less pen. They both play very similarly only the lowe is plain better.

Also, was the lowe always good and just typically played by bad players? I never noticed it as a particularly op tank.