Okay Geek Farm
Steve Jobs drove without a license plate for years, here's how he did it
Ricardo Trejo
Once again, we bring you your daily dose of Steve Jobs trivia! Whether you’ve known about it before or not, Steve Jobs was never one to tell about his business to pretty much anyone. So it’s pretty interesting the quirky stuff that the late Apple CEO did that no one really paid much attention to now that his biography has been published and released. For instance, how and why did Steve drive around without a license plate? — More after the break!
Jobs since his adolescence never seemed to want to play by “the rules”. So to be different — remember, Think Different — Steve never felt he needed to drive his usual Mercedes with a license plate.
In the 60 Minutes segment done on Steve Jobs, Walter Issacson — the author of Jobs’ biography — quoted him for the answer he gave in the reason for not having an untagged car:
“… I don’t want people following me.”
Walter replied, “don’t you think that not having a license plate is even more noticeable?”
Jobs answered, “yeah, you’re probably right. You know why I don’t have a license plate? Because I don’t have a license plate.”
And there in lies the key to everything Jobs believed in — that the rules simply didn’t apply to him. But just how did he get away with it?
New information from a post by iTWire sheds light that the former CEO had found a loophole in the California law that allowed him to legally drive “unmarked”. Apparently, the law in Cali says that anyone who gets themself a new car has only 6 months to drive without having a license plate. Steve, being the genius and rebel he was, made an arrangement with the car dealership in which he would simply swap out and lease an identical Mercedes SL55 AMG every six months.
As iTWire pointed out in their post, this would be a sweet gig for both parties involved, as the dealership could turn around and make a pretty penny off a used car previously owned by Steve Jobs.
