Cars

Mercedes-Benz·2006–2007

Jobs's silver SL55 AMG became famous for having no license plates and for habitually occupying handicapped parking spaces at Apple's campus, a rolling expression of his contrarian attitude toward everyday rules. He exploited a California grace period allowing new cars to be driven without permanent plates for six months by swapping the car for an identical new lease every six months, so no car ever needed plates. In a 2001 Fortune interview he called the missing plates "a little game I play" to avoid parking tickets, and when Walter Isaacson pressed him on it he half-jokingly claimed it was to avoid being followed. Colleagues recalled him parking in blue wheelchair-marked spots as though the chairman's title exempted him.

ABC News reports Jon Callas's account that Jobs leased the SL55 AMG and exploited California's six-month grace period before plates are required, trading the car every six months so plates were never installed. The Atlantic and LA Times corroborate the same swap pattern and lack of plates on his 2007 SL55. Cult of Mac collects photographic evidence and Andy Hertzfeld's recollection of the car in handicapped spaces, and Edible Apple cites Jobs's own 2001 Fortune quote and the Isaacson exchange about the missing plate.

• Why Steve Jobs Never Had License Plates on His Car
• How Steve Jobs Got Away with Not Having a License Plate
• Steve Jobs drove a Mercedes without license plates

Volkswagen·c. early 1970s

In his early twenties Jobs drove a Volkswagen Type 2 bus and sold it, along with Steve Wozniak's programmable calculator, to raise the roughly $1,300 needed for parts for the Apple I prototype. The decision to liquidate a modest, countercultural vehicle rather than seek outside money captures both his frugality and his willingness to trade personal comforts for a larger technological bet, marking his transition from wandering hippie to focused entrepreneur.

Fortune's account of Apple's origins describes how Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus while Wozniak sold his programmable calculator, together raising $1,300 to pay for the Apple I prototype's parts. A later summary of the same episode explains that selling the VW bus solved the funding problem that stood between Jobs and building the first Apple computer.

• Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen to raise $1,300 for Apple's first computer
• How 'Volkswagen bus' helped solve Steve Jobs' big Apple Computer problem

Porsche·c. late 1970s–1990s

For years Jobs leased identical black Porsche 911 convertibles, trading each in roughly every six months for an indistinguishable replacement, a habit people around him mistook for aesthetic intolerance of scratches. His daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs recalled asking if she could have one of his old Porsches and being sharply told she would get nothing, illustrating how tightly he controlled the cars and how little sentiment he attached to them. Later reporting suggests the true motive was avoiding license plates by exploiting California's six-month grace period, the same pattern he later repeated with the SL55 AMG.

Autoevolution, drawing on Jon Callas's account, explains that Jobs bought an identical black convertible Porsche 911 every six months for decades to exploit California's plate grace period, and notes that observers wrongly assumed the swaps were about avoiding scratches. A Benzinga report on Lisa Brennan-Jobs's memoir recounts her asking for one of his traded-in Porsches and being told in a "sour, biting" voice that she would get nothing.

• The Real Reason Why Steve Jobs Bought Identical Porsches Every Six Months
• Long before she wrote a memoir... (Lisa Brennan-Jobs on asking for a Porsche)

Feadship (builder); Philippe Starck / Ubik (designer)·2012 (delivered posthumously)

Venus was the custom superyacht Jobs commissioned from Dutch builder Feadship and designed over five years with Philippe Starck, extending his taste for minimalism and integrated technology into a private vessel. Starck described the collaboration as sharing "the same idea about the elegance of the minimal, the elegance of work well done," noting Jobs initially gave him only a target length and bedroom count before obsessing over every detail. Jobs died before the yacht was completed and never boarded it; its long aluminium hull, three-meter structural glass windows, and iMac-driven wheelhouse carried his design sensibility from Apple Stores and devices into a floating home.

Wikipedia's entry on Venus documents its 78.2-meter length, aluminium construction, large glass surfaces and roughly €105 million cost, and records that Jobs died a year before it was unveiled. BBC reporting on the launch quotes Starck on the shared philosophy behind the design and the five years spent refining it. A yachting industry profile details Jobs's insistence on structural glass and the iMac-based wheelhouse instrumentation.

• Venus (yacht)
• Steve Jobs high-tech yacht unveiled
• Six things you didn't know about Steve Jobs' superyacht Venus

BMW·c. 2000–2002

Jobs owned a BMW Z8, a limited-production aluminium-bodied roadster whose clean, retro-modern design and advanced engineering matched his preference for visually distinctive but understated performance cars. Auction documentation for the car explicitly ties it to his ownership and situates it within his broader pattern of favoring German-engineered vehicles, alongside his Mercedes-Benz SLs and BMW motorcycle.

CNBC's coverage of an RM Sotheby's auction identifies the specific BMW Z8 convertible once owned by Jobs, estimating a sale price of $300,000–$400,000, and cites the auction listing's note that Jobs had a preference for German engineering and design, mentioning his Mercedes-Benz SL and BMW motorcycles.

• The BMW Z8 Steve Jobs owned is being auctioned

Mercedes-Benz·c. early 1980s

Alongside his BMW motorcycle, Jobs owned a Mercedes 500 SE sedan in the early 1980s, but contemporary accounts note he explicitly preferred commuting on the BMW R60/2 rather than using the car, treating the Mercedes as a secondary, underused possession.

Retrospective profiles of Jobs's BMW motorcycle mention in passing that he also owned a Mercedes 500 SE at the time, describing it as a luxury sedan he used less often than the motorcycle; these are the only sources located for the car's ownership and offer no independent detail beyond this comparison.

• La moto de Steve Jobs, un símbolo de libertad
• La speciale BMW con cui Steve Jobs "volava"