Steve Jobs and the Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG Without Registration Plates

As Apple device users celebrate the arrival of a new operating system, we revisit a curious story starring Apple founder Steve Jobs and a Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG with no registration plates.

Steve Jobs remains one of the modern era’s most intriguing and enigmatic figures. Celebrated for his brilliance and ability to spot trends ahead of time, he was behind the creation of one of the world’s biggest technology giants: Nokia. Sorry… Apple. You know, the bitten-apple brand that sells extremely expensive phones and which almost everyone wants to own?

I should say that I joined the Apple tribe myself a few months ago, and I must admit I have been enjoying the experience - although I still wince at the amount I paid for the blasted phone.

Steve Jobs and the Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG

But cars, rather than phones, are why we are here. And, contrary to what we might expect, Steve Jobs did not drive a fashionable hybrid. Not at all: he drove a Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG. Was Steve Jobs a petrolhead?

The car with no registration plates

Perhaps he was not a petrolhead at all, and simply had good taste. It makes sense that a man who did not want to waste time choosing clothes would also have had little interest in spending extra time on the commute between home and work. From that perspective, opting for a comfortable sports car such as the SL was entirely logical. But why drive it without registration plates and park it in disabled parking bays?

Perhaps simply because he could. He was Steve Jobs, after all, and a multi-millionaire. Jobs was able to drive without registration plates in California because of a loophole in state law. Under California law CVC 4456, a vehicle may be used on public roads without registration plates for up to six months after purchase, provided it has approval from the relevant road authority and displays a windscreen sticker.

Steve Jobs’s Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG belonged to a leasing company. Whenever the six-month lease period ended, Jobs returned the car and collected another identical one. Et voilà… another six months with a car carrying no registration plates - a rather crude bit of opportunism, it must be said. According to several reports circulating online, Steve Jobs occasionally allowed the six-month period to expire and even had to pay some hefty fines… 65 dollars.

Why California changed the registration plates law

For these reasons and others, the state of California recently announced that it would repeal this law. The issue was the difficulty of identifying unregistered vehicles caught speeding, as well as a hit-and-run case involving a vehicle in these circumstances; the pedestrian later died as a result of the collision.

While it is impossible to state with 100% certainty why Steve Jobs drove a car without registration plates, the most plausible explanation is that this legal loophole allowed him to exceed speed limits and park in disabled spaces with near impunity.

Steve Jobs died in 2011, aged 56.