If it was considered a failure even by the British (and that does mean something with their tank designs...) maybe you should add an asteriks to the red MP with some extra unpleasentness to be expected on Start Roll of 11 or something - Stall, burning engine, whatever.
von Marwitz
It was not good, but did not achieve Covenanter, never mind TOG or Valiant status.
Think of it as a three quarter way house between Crusader and Cromwell. The A24, A27L and A27M started as the Cromwell I, II and III were later named Cavalier, Centaur and Cromwell. The Cavalier used the Crusader's Wilson transmission and braking from the Crusader and an upgraded version of the Crusader's Liberty engine (a design going back to WW1). The Centaur and Cromwell used a Merrit-Brown transmission based on that used in the Churchill, the Centaur using the Cavalier's Liberty while the Cromwell used a de-rated Merlin named the Meteor. A Centaur could be upgraded to Cromwell with an engine change and theoretically visa versa but not the Cavalier.
I would judge the Cavalier to be not much worse than the Crusader and fairly close to the Centaur in reliability. True that development work and mechanical fixes would have concentrated on the Centaur and Cromwell in preference, but they would have got many fixes and patches as so much was in common between the three. So I judge
Red MP to be enough. In their mainly training role there was time to iron out the worst faults, they are not in the same league as Kursk era Panthers. In practice they could have been better than Crusaders as they did not have to cope with the dust levels of the DTO.
So overall bad, but not that bad.
en.wikipedia.org
