What so they flitched their recce vehicles from the rebellion equivalent of the musical ride?
Or perhaps they brought the Tauntauns because the weather was too cold to use horses to control soccer roudies.
Don’t harsh my buzz, man. That’s the best pun I’ve made in decades. 
They have Tauntauns. There are at least four known Force users: The two Darths, Yoda and Luke, so they have wizards. Do I have to spell it out?
Or even more simply.
The rebels aren’t the only inhabitants of Hoth? Maybe they bought them from friendly locals?
The correct answer for most of these questions is “who gives a shit”? But since work is a bit slow…
not to mention:
g) prepare a working fighter base / space port with a command center and medical facilities
h) errect fortifications, including trench lines and fixed gun turrets
i) build a massive theater-wide shield generator
j) deploy a giant ion cannon capable of shooting a ship in orbit
it’s not all ice caves. They built a lot of permenant-looking stuff on Hoth so clearly they have been there for awhile.
The snow speeders might have just arrived a few days before the battle. Or, they might have to constantly “adjust the speeders for the cold”. De-icing control surfaces, recalibrating instruments, refilling antifreeze, whatever.
The problem with trying to pick apart these movies is a) it’s fantasy and b) you don’t really know how any of this shit would work because none of it has been invented yet.
I’m feeling a bit dense. Would you mind spelling it out.
A wizard did it.
Not so, it’s “A long time ago, in a galaxy far away…” 
I think the mechanics were union guys. So before each speeder flight, the speeder had to be ‘adjusted’ for the cold and that night, well it was quitting time and overtime is too steep for rebel scum to pay.
But Tauntauns themselves are surely local. I mean, I’m assuming that’s what Wampas eat, when there aren’t Jedi Knights around to snack on.
invented here on Earth.
I should also point out that a “minor” Star Wars nitpick consists of at least three pages.
Jump-jets and magical maneuverability aside, two-legged walkers from the Battletech universe are a much worse design than the four-legged AT-ATs.
Any engineer smarter than a 10-year old would see that you do not want your giant 80 ton tank dangerously close to tipping over at any given instant, especially given the unpredictable nature of a battlefield (terrain, direct hits, malfunctions, explosions, etc). Nor would you even consider the ridiculously large front profile a majority of them are sporting.
Don’t even get me started on the 'mechs that appear to have heads, or even faces
Silly. Megafauna in the Star Wars universe don’t eat anything.
Q. What do Rancors eat?
A. They wait for Bantha to fall in.
Q. So what do Banthas eat?
A. Sand.
Q. How come Rancors don’t eat sand?
A. zap Boring conversation anyway.
This conversation also works for Wampas/Tauntauns/ice.
Not to mention the big worm in the asteroid. Seems like it would have a fairly large appetite.
They eat Chinese food.
Well we can pretty safely assume the creature that captured Luke in the beginning was indigenous to Hoth. No sense in a beastie seeking out flesh to go all the way to Hoth to hang out in a super-deserted part of a nearly uninhabitable planet to FIND prey (ya know, unless you’re Predator).
As for adapting the speeders to the cold… see on the one hand we have people asking why the AT-ATs were being used in the extreme cold, and then another strain asking why the Rebels didn’t have cold-adapted buggies to tool around in. Well both can be answered at once — it’s tough to adapt everything for every terrain.
As for where the Tauntauns came from — we know from Cloud City and Lando’s dialogue that there are many, many planets that (for a while anyway) escape Empire scrutiny just for logistical reasons. Too small to garner a lot of attention. So, could they buy 50 Tauntauns and transport them to Hoth without raising a lot of Empire eyebrows? Yeah. Trade like that probably happens all across the galaxy all the time. And buying something that’s at least a LITTLE cold resistant for a front operation on a cold planet wouldn’t be too suspicious.
Or maybe they ARE local to Hoth, but they tend to find shelter overnight when the temperature dips significantly. I mean, there are plenty of creatures like that here… they live in cold climates but if you had it out riding all night overnight it’d eventually freeze to death. Think of the flipside, there are horses native to Arabia but that doesn’t mean you can ride one across the desert for days straight without it overheating at some point.
Or, even ice planets can have seasons. When they first started setting up their base, it was summer. When the movie starts, they’re just getting into the heart of winter. Summer is cold and snowy on Hoth, but winter is fucking freezing. They had the speeders set up to function during summer, but they weren’t ready to handle winter.
Nah, there was an oupost like Kevin Costner had in Dances with Wolves. Some Rebel guy took what he thought was an easy post out on Hoth. He was hangin’ with the locals, learned to ride Tauntauns, etc.
Sadly, the rest of the Rebels show up and shoot him for going native. They keep the tauntauns, and put the rest of locals on a reservation. They miss one, though. That one captures Luke…