Who Would Win

I've noticed that the Soviets had better guns and thicker armor than the NATO nations until relatively late.

NATO didn't start getting gun parity until the British 105mm L7.

NATO didn't start pulling ahead in armor until Chobham.

NATO tanks are almost always taller and heavier than their Soviet counterparts.

So, NATO was screwed before tanks like Abrams and Leopard II hit the scene?

Maybe not.

For the gun and armor to matter, you need to hit, and the Western designers put a lot of effort and thought into fire control.

The first step in accurate fire is an accurate determination of the target's range.

You'll see little bulges on the sides of US tank turrets.  These hold the objective lenses of the range finder, either coincidence or stereoscopic.

The earliest of these give the range which is called out and the appropriate stadia in the optic is aligned with the target.

The US miniaturized the mechanical fire control computers it'd been using on ships and put them in tanks.  The range obtained from the rangefinder could be input into the computer, along with wind speed and the reticle would be shifted so the gunner need only align a, relatively simple and uncluttered, crosshair on the target to hit.

This is all happening while the T-55 has no rangefinder at all and the T-62 uses stadiametric ranging.

The US then automated the process by putting a linkage between the rangefinder and fire control computer.

This was in the 90mm equipped M48A2, in 1953!

The M60A1 started with this.  Later versions got a solid state computer, laser rangefinder and sensors to compensate for wind muzzle droop and cant.

This is all in addition to stabilization that allowed for firing accurately on the move.

Of course, to effectively use all this fun technology requires some education and training that's, typically, absent from the Warsaw Pact and Soviet customers.

Israel vs et al kind of proves the thesis.