I much rather see a 10 strong unit of warriors sans rhinos for 250 to hold my line.

Six strong units is just meh. Core units of basic infantry are usually larger, squats are more akin to guardsmen than space marines. In fact I wouldnś mind if warriors were even statted the same as guardsmen and do 10 for 200 pts. (all prices incl hearthguard)

The existence of clipping is not an argument. Position better.

I've argued before that squats should lose rhinos altogether. I would have loved some nice industrial vehicles. The recently released genestealer cult goliath is in my mind a perfect fit for squats (even the rockgrinder in front is thematic, give them 5+ CC and 0 FF, and suddenly squats have an interesting CC unit).
Rhinos made sense when squats were abhumans in the Imperial Guard. But as a stand alone race it makes no sense.
I know this is unlikely to happen, I just wanted to voice my opponion.

In previous iterations of the Squat list, they had Rhino-like APC's with their own name, but it didn't seem to stick. An issue would be sourcing the models and forcing all the existing players to change over.

In a perfect world, if Squats were ever to get re-released they would totally get their own cool APC, and the rockgrinder thing would be perfect.

As a point of fluff, Squats were never 'abhumans in the Imperial Guard'. There were always originally humans who had settles the galactic core and evolved in high gravity after being cut off from the imperium for thousands of years. They were always their own stand alone race, but had access to Imperial equipment like lasguns and Rhinos (as they had the original STC blueprints from Earth).

I would argue that sourcing new models isn't needed. A rhino would make for a counts-as model just as easily as any other. Getting agreement from us the grumpy unwashed masses about a fan-made unit, which let's be serious, would be a rhino by another name likely in all effects is another matter! However it might be an interesting thought exercise to make a [squat homeworld rhino] with a slightly different theme to to see how it fits.

anyhoos this is an interesting series of threads. thanks for doing them

I expect that to be a 'lively' discussion

Yes and no. They were a quasi independent realm within the greater imperium and were found in great numbers in both the Imperial Army/Guard and as independent armies. More akin to the autonomy of the AdMech than your average imperial world. All that is neither here nor there for the list though.

Getting agreement from us the grumpy unwashed masses about a fan-made unit, which let's be serious, would be a rhino by another name likely in all effects is another matter!

They used Rhinos in SM/SM2, there's no practical or characterful reason (outside of subjective opinion) for they should /not/ use them now.

And the only reason that argument works for Squats at all is that there were no releases between SM and now. Most armies had an update in E40K before EA. Since Squats didn't, we have huge gaps in the range, and I would argue that APC is such a gap. Had squats survived I'm certain they would have had an APC of their own.