Syd’s World of Vintage Trucks
SYD GRINS AS SHE REVS UP the engine of her beige
1975 Ford Bronco, the truck growling and sputtering loud enough to wake the neighbors in the singersongwriter-producer’s quiet Central L.A. neighborhood. Syd’s been busy readying new music; in February, she released her first solo single in four years, a woozily beautiful R&B track called “Missing Out,” and she’s got a new album of similarly vibe-y songs on the way. But she’s also spent lots of time on her hobby: amassing a small fleet of vintage trucks and fixing them up herself. “The biggest thing for me about these cars is the empowerment of knowing what the fuck is wrong and trying to diagnose it,” she says. “Getting under the hood reminds me how I felt when I started engineering with music.”
She learned from her dad, as well as a bunch of YouTube tutorials, spending nearly $150,000 fixing up her four large trucks. She’s disassembled engines, redone interiors and flooring, installed brake boosters and steering boxes. Each time she gets a paycheck, a chunk goes toward improving the fleet.
The latest addition to her collection is the Bronco, named Shea, after its shea-butter coat (the car’s full name is Shea Buttercup). She also owns a 1997 Land Rover Defender that the previous owner called Piper, after the large black pipe on the car’s left side. (She’s yet to name her two forest-green International Harvester Scouts.) “I do these projects mostly when I’m in the mood to get my hands dirty,” she says. “I wait until I get another check, send a truck to the shop, and they’ll tell me it’s seven racks for AC. ‘OK, I’ll do it myself.’ ”
Shea is Syd’s favorite of the bunch, perhaps for the simplest reason: It’s really, really big. “Maybe it’s because I’m a small person that I like big vehicles,” she says. “I’m up really high, big wheels, big rims, big tires. The engine sounds beautiful. When I was younger I always liked the idea of owning a monster truck, but I never actually liked real monster trucks. I feel like this is close.”