Key takeaways:
- Sydney Sweeney documents restoring a vintage Bronco on TikTok and aims to empower women to get into cars.
- Only 1.8% of automotive service technicians and mechanics in the US are women, highlighting a significant gender gap in the industry.
- Sweeney’s garage videos featuring a vintage Bronco make automotive maintenance more accessible and inviting for viewers, especially women.
A vintage Bronco, a garage, and a phone propped on a tool chest. That is the whole pitch behind Sydney Sweeney’s Syd’s Garage TikTok, and it may be the most useful thing a famous person has done for the wrench-turning world in years. Her garage habit is back in the news this week, so it’s worth looking at what she actually built, and at the numbers that explain why it matters.
What she actually did
Ford’s own March 2023 release for its “Built Ford Proud” campaign introduced Sweeney as “the only girl in the shop” and said she documents restoring a vintage Bronco on TikTok. The series is called Auto 101, and the lessons are not glamorous: checking tire pressure, jumping a dead battery, basic maintenance. That is exactly the stuff that leaves people on a shoulder waiting on a $150 tow. Ford and Dickies also launched a Ford x Sydney Sweeney workwear collection, sold at merchandise.ford.com, aimed at women working on cars. Sweeney said in the release that she hopes to “empower and uplift women” to get into cars.
The gap is bigger than you think
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted about 901,000 people working as automotive service technicians and mechanics in 2025. Women made up 1.8 percent of them, which works out to roughly 16,000 people in the whole country. Among automotive body and related repairers, the share was 4.2 percent. A trade that size, with that few women in it, is not a pipeline problem. It is a door that most people never get shown.
Why a Bronco on a phone screen works
Most people learn their first wrench turn because somebody stood next to them and showed them. A lot of women never got that somebody. A video of a person you recognize jumping a battery, calmly, with no shop-teacher condescension, lowers the bar for trying it yourself. And a first-generation Bronco is about as friendly as project trucks get: simple mechanicals, no computers to fight, and a parts catalog as thick as a phone book. It is a good truck to fail on safely.
We covered her push to put her name on auto gear earlier, and whatever you think of the merch, the bigger effect is the audience. Women already work at the top of the sport too, as with Jamie Chadwick’s latest Williams test. The gap lives in the garage, not the grid.
Three things to learn this weekend
If Auto 101 is your starting line, start with these. Check tire pressure using the placard on the driver’s door jamb, not the maximum number molded into the sidewall, because the sidewall figure is the tire’s limit, not your car’s target. Learn the jump-start order: positive to positive on the dead battery, positive on the donor, negative on the donor, then the last clamp on bare metal away from the battery, not on the dead battery’s negative post. And pull the dipstick: oil level takes thirty seconds and saves engines.
Women have been fixing trucks for the military for decades. The skill was never the issue. The invitation was. If a Bronco and a tripod get more people to pick up a wrench, good.
Should high schools make basic auto shop a requirement for every student, or leave it as an elective?
EL Puckett