Attendees come to Rancho San Marcos Golf Course for diverse vehicles, barbecue, silent auction, and more to raise money for Meals on Wheels program
For the fourth straight year, city and county leaders, car aficionados, and people just wanting to enjoy an afternoon of food, music, and dancing gathered at Rancho San Marcos Golf Course, just east of Lake Cachuma for the Cars and Cowboys car show on Saturday, Sept. 6.
The event is a main fundraiser for the Buellton Meals on Wheels program, which provides daily meals for the elderly in the Santa Ynez Valley. The program is run by the nonprofit Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach.
The site was a departure from the previous three years, when the show was held at Red River Ranch in Los Olivos. However, according to Pam Gnekow, executive director of Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach, Al and Denise Frink, the ranch’s owners, have been doing some renovations on their property and couldn’t host it this year.
That left Gnekow with the task of finding a new site for Cars and Cowboys, but a chance visit to Rancho San Marcos gave her a great alternative. “I came here to attend a wedding, and it was my first time here,” she said. “I thought this was just a fantastic place, and I told the owner, ‘I’ll do anything if you let me have the car show here,’ and he said OK. I’m just thrilled to have this at such a nice venue.”
The Cars and Cowboys show organizers take pride in getting a car or two that’s a bit “out of the box,” like the Batmobile, which made an appearance at the show last year. There was no Batmobile this year, but there was the Platypus, a funky-looking car that actually started out as an airplane.
Dana Newquist of Santa Barbara tells the story of finding the shell of a 1947 Republic Seabee Amphibious Airplane in a friend’s salvage shop. Newquist said his friend resisted his overtures to buy the fuselage for five years until finally agreeing to the deal in 2019.
“And then I met this guy,” Newquist said, pointing to Bruce Terry, who did the metal fabrication. “He said, ‘I can’t use this. If you want a car like this, I have to get fresh aluminum to build this up. I asked ‘How long will that take?’ and he said ‘I don’t know.’ Turns out it’s taken five years and it’s finally here.”
Newquist said he always gets reactions from people at the shows “Oh, everybody comes to see it,” he said. “You know, ‘what is it?’ or ‘How’s it powered?’ so on and so forth. It drives like a car, but we really wanted to make it look like an airplane, so we have stuff on it like the fin that makes it look different.”
The Platypus was one of several cars displayed on one of the greens and fairways of the gold course, right next to the pond. The field of cars, ranging from classics, to racing cars, European models, one of which was a rare 1970 Fiat minivan, which was brought by Mark and Lois Mitchell.
“We’ve had this for six or seven years after buying it from a car website,” Mark Mitchell said. “The original owner was from Vienna, Austria, and took good care of it, really meticulous. Everytime he filled up he would write it in a little book. When we got it, it only had about 40,000 miles on it.”
Mitchell said the van is one of about 18 cars he owns and takes to car shows, and the organizers requested the van.
“I came here last year, and then they asked if I could bring something a little different,” he said. “So I gave them a couple of choices and they said ‘Yeah, bring that van.”
In addition to the cars being shown, attendees were also treated to premium food, wine, and cocktails, and a silent auction of various lodging, dining, and vacation packages from local vendors. Doing the honors as the auctioneer was Taylor Glines of Santa Maria.
“Like last year, I knew I wanted to get a female to do the auction,” Gnekow said. “And I got a good one.”Glines comes from a long line of auctioneers, one of them being the late Jim Glines, who is also known as the founder of the Community Bank of Santa Maria.
“Pam and I are good friends, and I was happy to accept her invitation to do this,” Glines said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, when I was young and listening to my dad and grandfather doing it. I used to ride with my grandpa in the truck and he would be listening to his auction tapes. It just always seemed to be a cool thing to do for me.”
After the auction, the crowd, all nestled in a nicely shaded area next to the clubhouse, were entertained by music from DJ Scott Topper, and near the end of the event were getting together for some line dancing, a fitting end for an event called Cars and Cowboys.
