The Panther Clipper has always been able to fit on a large pad. Anything that can't fit on a large pad is something else, not the Panther Clipper.
There is room for a ship that is considerably bulkier than any existing Large-pad ship. Imagine a stretched T9 that is as long as a Beluga, or two Belugas with the fins removed and bolted together side-by-side, or a Cutter with all the space between the main fuselage and the outriggers filled in with more fuselage. All the big ships currently in the game waste a lot of the available volume.
But the original Panther Clipper was a roomy box with nothing in it, current ships have space reserved for core systems. So the capacity won't be 2,000 tons. I'd anticipate three size 8 slots for optional internals (as its nearest rivals both have two), plus one of each smaller slot (close to what the T9 has, except for the T9's repeated 4/3 slots).
There is an obvious niche for it: bulk-loading a Carrier. However, there is also a problem: it makes the T9, and possibly the Cutter, completely obsolete. The Cutter at least has speed, and maybe better shields.
So what plausible advantage could a T9 have over a Panther Clipper? I suppose the PC could justifiably be even slower and less agile than the T9, and could be given the Cutter's drift issue (which the T9 doesn't have). It could also be given fewer (but bigger) internals to make it less versatile, and landing gear which is useless for rough terrain, but the T9 is rarely used in situations where those would be drawbacks. It wouldn't have the Lakon high-visibility cockpit.