A couple admires a black Model A Ford at Cactus Jalopies. (Richard McGuire/ File photo)
Dale Boyd
Osoyoos Times
Cactus Jalopies, an immensely popular car show in Osoyoos, is not going ahead next year.
For 15 years the show has brought thousands of hot rods, sweet rides and car fanatics to Osoyoos for the event, but organizer and event founder JF Launier said the car show has become a struggle for the board and volunteers to put on in recent years.
“We’re just worn out. We’ve built something bigger than we can really manage. I don’t think we can do it year after year, it’s a big undertaking,” Launier said.
He said the people of Osoyoos have been supportive, but funding was harder to come by in recent years.
“It’s definitely not because of a lack of community support.What it was really was a change in leadership,” on town council, Launier said.
The event was put on in 2019 with the help of some last-minute funding from the Town of Osoyoos. The $6,500 provided by the town was taken out of the Resort Municipality Initiative (RMI) funding.
Read more: Cactus Jalopies car show expected to be largest yet
“We just wanted to have some fun with some car people. There is no reward for us. We don’t take anything financially out of it. We invest usually, it’s all of us (volunteers and board members) that end up having money tied up in it,” Launier said. “Who benefits? Who benefits is the hotels, the restaurants and the Chamber of Commerce and we really haven’t had them step up to the plate to do what they should have done to make sure the rooms were filled and our clients were happy.”
The future remains unclear for the popular car show, which will be featured prominently along with shots of the town in an upcoming episode of the History Channel series Rust Valley Restorers, which is also on Netflix, reaching viewers in 190 countries.
Cactus Jalopies may return in some form in the future, but Launier said it is unclear what that future will look like.
“If we take a year off and don’t do the car show, for our volunteers it is like Humpty Dumpty, can we put it back together again for 2021?” Launier said. “There is talk of having the car show every two years, but I have a busy, busy life. It’s not my job to fill the hotels. It’s my job to fix cars and make a living.”
Around 700 cars with 1,400 people attached, and thousands more visiting town to browse were brought to Osoyoos for the 2019 show.
“We bring the people to town, we have delivered over and over and over again. If anyone else had an event that could be that big they would get better support for some of this, and I don’t understand it,” Launier said.
It was a close call to go ahead with the 2019 show, Launier said, but he and the board did not want to leave car lovers and event participants hanging.
“We felt like we’ve been bounced between Destination Osoyoos and the Town of Osoyoos and their different ways of budgeting for so long, that we just really threw our arms up in the air about three weeks before the event (this) year and we did not want to disappoint our car people and throw in the towel,” Launier said.
While the event has reached an end, Launier was grateful to the town, the volunteers and those who came out to attend the show.
“After 15 years it’s enough. We have proven what we needed to prove to ourselves: that we can put on the best car show in the northwest,” Launier said.
