Steve Jobs' Lack of License Plate Explained

Wednesday October 26, 2011 10:28 pm PDT by Arnold Kim

Photo by IrishEyes/Flickr
ITWire claims to have the truth about how Steve Jobs had no license plate on his Mercedes.

This lack of license plate has drawn a lot of speculation over the years, but no clear answer had been pinned down. ITWire spoke with Jon Callas, who had worked in security roles at Apple. He explained how Jobs got away with it:

Steve (or someone close to him) spotted a loophole in the California vehicle laws. Anyone with a brand new car had a maximum of six months to affix the issued number plate to the vehicle.

So Jobs made an arrangement with the leasing company; he would always change cars during the sixth month of the lease, exchanging one silver Mercedes SL55 AMG for another identical one. At no time would he ever be in a car as old as six months; and thus there was no legal requirement to have the number plates fitted.

Top Rated Comments

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96whitels

17 weeks ago

Like a Boss! :D

Rating: 55 Positives / 7 Negatives

Eidorian

17 weeks ago

I guess that is what you do when you have that kind of money.

Rating: 50 Positives / 4 Negatives

macduke

17 weeks ago

Hah, clever guy. But why leave the license plate frame on?

Rating: 34 Positives / 4 Negatives

nick219

17 weeks ago

must be nice never losing that new car smell

Rating: 26 Positives / 1 Negatives

Rocketman

17 weeks ago

Now that it's public, EVERYONE will want to do it!

Rating: 26 Positives / 1 Negatives

JayLenochiniMac

17 weeks ago

He didn't want to be tracked.

Rating: 27 Positives / 2 Negatives

mdwsta4

17 weeks ago

Oddly enough, I do the same thing with my cars (no license plate frames tho). I'm fortunate enough to drive company cars and usually only have them for 4-6 months. As the registration sticker that dealers put on the front windshield is good for 6 months I figured it was safe to run without plates. After 4 years of living in CA and not having plates I've only been pulled over and questioned once. My response was 'I've only had the car for 3 months'. The cop's response 'okay'.

Having not grown up in CA, I found the fact that new cars don't have temp plates/tags extremely strange, but it is what it is.

Rating: 22 Positives / 0 Negatives

ghostlyorb

17 weeks ago

What is the point of not having a license plate?

Rating: 28 Positives / 7 Negatives

Q Bert

17 weeks ago

In the 60 Minutes interview with Walter Isaacson, he has asked Steve about this and Steve replied that he doesn't want to be followed around by paparazzis thinking that a specific license plate number would be identified to him/the car. And Walter have pointed out that having no license plate would make him more noticeable thus making the car more suspicious to which Steve adamantly agreed.

He just wants to be different, I guess

Rating: 24 Positives / 4 Negatives

hobo.hopkins

17 weeks ago

It sounds plausible. He certainly wouldn't have any trouble financially pulling that off.

Rating: 19 Positives / 1 Negatives

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