"I thought at first he was joking with me," Josefin Justin, 19, told the paper.
Justin was waiting tables at the Njuraanger Cafe in Sundsvall in central Sweden when the man, who had recently retired and was dining with a group of gentlemen, asked her age.
When she told him, "he said I would get his Porsche as a tip".
"At first I was a little suspicious but I didn't get the feeling he was hitting on me or anything, he just seemed really nice," she said.
A very generous offer
She got his phone number and the next day when she called him, he said he remembered his generous offer. Accompanied by her father, she went to the man's house to pick up her new car.
It turned out to be 1979 Porsche 924 worth $4 000.
"It needs a little work, a paint job among other things, but we checked it out and everything was fine," Justin said.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, told the paper he could not really explain why he gave her the car.
"I was just sitting there in the restaurant and looked her in the eyes and saw an angel and thought to myself 'The Porsche, she should have it'," he said.
Asked if he had any regrets, he replied: "No, absolutely not."
The incident is reminiscent of the 1994 Hollywood movie It Could Happen To You starring Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda, in which a waitress becomes a millionaire when her customer offers to share his lottery ticket with her in lieu of a tip.