Inside Sydney Sweeney’s Vintage Car Garage

If you were already enamored by Sydney Sweeney in Euphoria, you may want to look away now, because she’s about to get much, much cooler.

The actress is a vintage car aficionado—and not just from afar. She collects rare, old models; finds new parts online; and restores the vehicles herself. If you’re thinking that sounds like an old-school boys’ game, gear up, because times are changing, and Sweeney’s TikTok, syds_garage, is proof.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of vintage vehicles,” Sweeney tells BAZAAR.com at eBay Motors’ New York Auto Parts Show at Classic Car Club Manhattan, where we admire her newly restored cherry red Bronco. “My babysitters (twin sisters) when I was little actually used to be race car drivers, and I’d go to the track a lot, and I thought I was going to be a race car driver when I grew up.”

Sweeney knows her hobby has drawn eyes because of how “random” and rare it feels for a Gen Z woman, but she hopes her openness about it helps break down the gender roles that exist within the vintage automobile world and reinforces the fact that women don’t have limits.

“I think people just have to not be afraid of putting themselves in a male-dominated environment,” she says. “Like, I know that there’s so much I have to learn, and I think it’s okay to not know everything. You only learn if you are there and you’re putting yourself there, so I think if we just support women and push them to try harder and challenge themselves, we’ll get there.”

The star, who plays Cassie Howard in the dark HBO drama gone viral, is dressed in a dark gray jumpsuit by Outerknown for the event, featuring a patch with her name, and black boot heels—very mechanic chic. There’s no glittery Euphoria glam or metallic eye shadow in sight, rather she keeps it simple with black eyeliner and leaves her hair down in soft, casual waves.

“This is the first time anyone’s seeing it,” she says of her 1969 Ford Bronco, as she caresses its side and gazes at it as if it were her first child—which, in a sense, it is. On her TikTok, the actress has been sharing videos of her fixing up the car—her first big restoration project—inside her best friend’s father’s auto shop. Coincidentally, that friend’s dad is Rod Emory, whose Emory Motorsports business has been generating Outlaw Porsche 356s since the ’90s.

“He builds and restores the most beautiful vintage Porsches, and I somehow convinced him to let me have my Bronco in the shop—because he only does Porsches,” Sweeney says. “So he cleared out a little section for me, and he walked me through, and … he and the people in his shop helped me and taught me how to do everything, because there’s so much to learn, and I don’t know everything at all.”

Sweeney says she worked on the car for about a year and a half, “which is a good amount of time,” and her next car will take three years to fully restore. When I ask what that car will be, she smirks. “It’s a surprise,” she says.

“It’s really special,” she adds, pausing to decide if she wants to reveal more. “Rod’s happy I’m doing it.” That’s it. Our girl, the film star, the actual real mechanic, is restoring a Porsche. Oh, the TikTok content.

In the meantime—as if she didn’t have an entire Hollywood career to focus on as well—Sweeney is also fixing up a baby blue 1967 Ford Mustang, which she’s named Britney. The beautiful vintage vehicle has made several appearances on Sweeney’s TikTok lately, and she says the restoration won’t take long, she’s “just going to change out the engine.” Casual.

While admiring the other cars in the lot at eBay Motors’ first Auto Parts Show in New York—a bright blue Hellcat Pacifica minivan, a six-wheel ’90s Ford Ranger, and a Prius hybrid by racer Emelia Hartford—the actress shares she can’t wait to have a full garage filled with vintage dream cars. “I would love to collect them,” she says. It’s too hard to pick a favorite, but when I ask her what Cassie’s ideal car would be, she says, “I feel like Cassie would just love to be in Nate’s truck.”

Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper’s Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets.