Industry Event âHeels & Wheelsâ Puts Female Car Enthusiasts in the Driverâs Seat

The showstopping 2025 McLaren Artura Spider © Kelsi Pich

All-women thrust event Heels and Wheels has blossomed into a staple of the West Coast automotive scene. Showcasing cars from starring manufacturers and featuring salient pistillate figures from the industry, this year's gathering successful Portland marked a peculiar occasion: its 12th day and arrogant milestone for laminitis Christine Overstreet, whose inheritance successful automotive PR, which included heading up trader grooming programs for Nissan and nationalist relations for Kia Motors America (where she supported media covering the Kia Motors Team Paris-Dakar 2000 run), inspired her to make an alternate to the accepted often male-dominated car show.

Heels & Wheels: By Women, For Women

Heels & Wheels began arsenic a level to promote discussions astir cars from a pistillate perspective, focusing connected what women question successful vehicles—whether a family-friendly XUV oregon a sporty convertible—and bring unneurotic professionals with a shared automotive absorption for real-world, on-road testing. It besides recognizes women arsenic a important unit successful automotive purchasing. A 2021 Cars.com survey recovered that women influenced 85 percent of household car-buying decisions and accounted for 62 percent of shoppers, yet women marque up lone a 4th of dealership income staff. Overstreet notes that participants not lone connection invaluable insights among manufacture peers but besides stock accusation connected vehicles, empowering their audiences and pistillate consumers with greater cognition and buying confidence.

The writer getting acquainted with the V90 Cross Country

Catching up with acquainted faces and forging caller friendships and connections with women crossed the manufacture is different large gully for newbie and seasoned attendees. Plus, the accidental to web with an expanding fig of women successful cardinal roles astatine North American car manufacturers. This year, Volvo's marque and manner communications pb Amanda Ignatius, Mazda nationalist affairs manager Tamara Mlynarczyk, and merchandise communications specializer astatine Toyota North America Breanne McCallop attended alongside representatives from Audi, Cadillac, and Rivian.

The Car List

No alien to coordinating the myriad details that spell into specified events, since 2010, Overstreet and the squad astatine her company Overstreet Events person handled logistics for nationalist and planetary drives with apical automakers, from Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover to Maserati. Tending to beryllium “hands-off” astir the Heels & Wheels car list, she alternatively lets manufacturers prime fleet vehicles to connection attendees a wide premix of thrust experiences depending connected sum interests and focus, and the lineup this twelvemonth did not disappoint.

Lined up extracurricular The Porter Portland

There was all-weather hybrid the 2025 Toyota Camry XSE AWD, and a KIA EV9 GT-Line AWD, whose awesome range, spacious three-row plan and high-tech interior made it a apical contender successful its people and 2024 World Car of The Year award winner. Another three-row, and a idiosyncratic all-round favourite the Mazda CX-90, appeared excessively alongside way toys everyone wanted to try: a Nissan Z Nismo and McLaren Artura Spider.

Heels & Wheels 2024 kicked disconnected astatine The Porter Portland successful downtown Portland with a reception sponsored by Nissan and a presumption by Cars.com probe and insights manager Amie Lindaas that looked astatine however Gen Z is redrawing the roadmap for car buying. Key takeaways were manner acceptable resonates much than marque loyalty (Toyota, Mazda and KIA among immoderate of the astir trusted) with affordability a cardinal decider. Perhaps astir surprisingly, though, Gen Z values the bully old-fashioned dealership arsenic their go-to for car buying implicit apps similar Carvana and Cazoo. Next morning, the Overstreet squad and edifice valet had their enactment chopped retired lining up 14 vehicles for our greeting way retired to The Allison Inn & Spa for a afloat and fast-paced time of trial drives successful a precise bucolic and verging connected autumnal Oregon Wine Country.

Luxury Wagons to the 'Supercar of SUVs'

Station wagons whitethorn not beryllium arsenic fashionable successful America arsenic they are successful Europe, but Volvo is shifting perceptions with its adventure-ready V90 Cross Country B6 AWD Ultra. From an aesthetic perspective, I was instantly smitten by its sporty silhouette, acheronian wood trim, and chic crystal shifter by Swedish glassware specialists Orrefors. Volvo’s top-spec exemplary is packed with features, too, including the now-standard massaging seats. The car handled beautifully connected the road, delivering awesome acceleration and coagulated road substance system arsenic we traveled southbound towards Willamette Valley. I awarded other points for the cargo space, which, arsenic a “DINK” idiosyncratic who likes heading to the mountains, looked conscionable close for loading up the skis.

Dawn Gibson-Thigpen aka Sassy Auto Chick successful the DBX707

Next up was the Audi A6 Avant, a powerhouse of practicality with an awesome 621 horsepower and a thrilling 0-60 mph successful 3.3 seconds. This twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 show wagon was a joyousness to drive, adjacent if the nine-mile Bald Peak Loop offered conscionable a 17-minute glimpse of its capabilities, leaving maine – and everyone other who drove it that time – anxious for more. Inside, the 2024 exemplary had luxurious details galore and featured an intuitive tech-savvy infotainment system, including a 12.3-inch integer gauge cluster, dual touchscreens, positive a Bang & Olufsen stereo arsenic standard. Starting astatine $125,800, optional upgrades similar the heads-up show and a motion-activated rear liftgate would propulsion the terms to conscionable implicit $144,000.

For those with a sensation for extravagance, the 2025 Aston Martin DBX707—a existent solemnisation of excess—stood retired successful a striking Synapse Orange exterior-interior combination. With a terms tag of $352,200, the astir costly car tested that day, it narrowly edged retired the McLaren by $21,900. This super-SUV packs a 697-horsepower twin-turbo V8 motor and a nine-speed automatic transmission, offering some utmost powerfulness and amazingly straightforward handling compared to the Cadillac Lyriq AWD Sport 3. The Lyriq was a pleasance to drive, but its LED touchscreen, serving arsenic some the infotainment strategy and operator gauge display, was a situation to navigate astatine first. As for the Aston thrust experience, Dawn Gibson-Thigpen (aka Sassy Auto Chick) enactment it best: “The DBX707 is an SUV with a sportscar soul.”

The EVs

Arnie would approve. The Hummer EV3 © Keri Bridgwater/JustLuxe

Arnold Schwarzenegger purchased the archetypal civilian Hummer to rotation disconnected the assembly enactment in 1992, but nether GMC, Hummer is backmost with a almighty all-electric version. Well-engineered and well-designed, the Hummer EV SUV felt similar a wide shouldered luxurious beast. I didn’t get to play with the crab-walk mode oregon region immoderate of the T-top extortion panels, but the 35-inch off-road tires and four-wheel steering made it consciousness arsenic manageable connected the road arsenic it did connected state roads astir The Alison Inn. And astir arsenic acold removed from its gas-guzzling older sibling arsenic you could get, I was floored to larn its Ultium artillery tech provides an estimated scope of 300-plus miles.

Having admired a increasing fig of Rivians astir San Diego, I was thrilled to get down the instrumentality of a 2025 R1S Performance Dual Max. A manner marque whose adventure-centric EVs are associated with the outdoors, it makes consciousness a erstwhile state presumption adjacent Yosemite National Park has go its newest charging outpost. Aesthetically, the R1S is simply a full caput turner and, though weighing successful astatine 7000lbs, felt agile connected each conception of the thrust loop. The compartment was impressively quiet, too. Even much impressive? Its 410-mile scope connected a afloat charge.

The Track Toys

Keri Bridgwater/JustLuxe

Track-ready show car, the 2024 Nissan Z Nismo, was astatine the apical of my 'would similar to drive' database for the day, and by precocious afternoon, I had my chance. There was nary manual transmission (like the Nissan Z, which I happily drove backmost into Santa Barbara during Heels & Wheels 2022); however, the 9-speed car is specially tuned for precise shifts that driving enthusiasts (aka purists) volition enjoy. As a Datsun 240Z instrumentality girl, I loved the two-seaters' retro-modern exterior styling, although, connected this model, plan elements were inspired by the GT500 contention car. Inside the cabin, a cockpit-like interior and sports seats ramped up the racetrack vibes. To marque things fair, Overstreet allotted 30-minute thrust times per car, but with the twin-turbo 3L V6 making it specified a visceral experience, it would person been fantastic to get a small amended acquainted with the paddle shifters. With an EPA substance system of 17mpg astir town, it's not the benignant of centrifugal you'd popular to the shops in, but if you did, you'd nary uncertainty person a large clip and crook a batch of heads on the way. 

McLaren property serviceman Natalie Riordan successful the Artura Spider

The buzziest thrust of the time was undoubtedly the 2025 McLaren Artura Spider: an agile, lightning-fast supercar successful Volcano Blue with a $330,300 MSRP that idled deep. Its twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6 motor paired with an electrical centrifugal produces 690 horses and boasts a 0-60 mph clip of astir 3 seconds. The gullwing doors (the interior handles lucifer a tin opener) took a infinitesimal to fig out, truthful by the clip I acceptable disconnected for my six-minute loop astir the artifact – in comfortableness mode, albeit with the retractable hardtop down – all that accusation flew consecutive retired of my head. But possibly arsenic each archetypal supercar experiences go, the infinitesimal I climbed retired of the cockpit, bosom racing, it near maine wanting more. Until Heels & Wheels 2026, then.

All photos courtesy Kelsi Pich/Heels & Wheels unless different noted.

Amelia Dalgaard aka MotorHead Mama scopes retired the McLaren