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California DMV Loophole Allowed Jobs to Drive Sans-Plates
- pavel_lishin 15y agoI wonder if this also applies to used cars; if you don't mind driving a bit of a clunker, you could do this affordably. A twenty year old car does not depreciate in value significantly over six months. edit: hm, looks like it only applies to cars sold by a dealer.
- zach 15y agoSo basically, Steve got a new Mercedes more often than I get new shoes. Now that's what I expect out of a multibillionaire. Good to see he at least kept himself in new-car smell on a regular basis, and certainly kept a local dealer quite happy.
- gcb 15y agohe probably got cancer from all the volatile compounds that gives new cars that smell.
- electromagnetic 15y agoUh, they stick an ozonator (ozone) in the car at the end of the factory run. Used car dealers frequently use them. Due to the fact the Ozone will bind to almost anything volatile, the air is effectively sterilised and gives it that "new car smell". tl;dr: you're a douche; your internet access should probably be revoked
- michaelcampbell 15y agoSince we're name calling, you're a humorless shitstain and should be sterilized. In other words, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cxNR9ML8k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cxNR9ML8k.
- ovi256 15y agoOzone is a well known cancerigen. Maybe they shouldn't do that anymore ?
- felipemnoa 15y agoIgnorant guy talking here: Wouldn't it just "fly away". I mean, its a gas. Why would there be any sticking around when delivered to the dealer?
- electromagnetic 15y agoOzone is exceptionally unstable, hence carcinogenic. However it's put in after the factory run. You get your car at best 2 weeks after that, unless it's imported and then its months. There's unlikely to be any ozone left after 12 hours anyway, but cars aren't air tight so volatile or not within the weeks it takes to get to you the level should be down to zero.
- gcv 15y agoOh, chill out. The article says the car was leased. He probably had to pay some kind of premium to keep his leases down to six months at a time, but it's not like he was buying a new $120k car twice a year.
- Steko 15y agoSteve Jobs driving a car for 6 months actually might increase it's value. I may be exaggerating slightly but I bet it didn't cost all that much.
- jarek 15y agoI don't think most people who can afford $120k Mercedes vehicles really care who's driven them before. If it was a Ferrari driven by a rock star, maybe, but people who drive Benzes are generally boring and reasonable.
- baddox 15y agoThat's a $120,000 car? Hopefully it looks better from the front, or is extremely comfortable.
- nkassis 15y agoIt sounds (literally) pretty cool ;p Goes fast. Comfort is a secondary thing. In fact you gotta pay extra usually for the slim down race models with even less comfort. Forget the AC/radio... in some of those high end race car models.
- hugh3 15y agoMore like $140K. Actually I think they don't make the SL55 any more, so the latest one would have to be an SL63. It doesn't look all that different to a $45,000 SLK, though, which makes it the insanely fast borderline-supercar of choice for the billionaire who wants to remain relatively inconspicuous.
- 15y ago
- cvg 15y agoI'm not sure that he had to get a brand new car every six months. He could have created a new lease on the same car every six month from a leasing company. That should have been enough to satisfy the law: http://dmv.ca.gov/fee_calc/feecalcfaq.htm#plates http://dmv.ca.gov/fee_calc/feecalcfaq.htm#plates
- nlh 15y agoI think you nailed it on the head here. This is the most likely scenario for what actually happened.
- Anechoic 15y ago>Now that's what I expect out of a multibillionaire. I suppose it makes up for him not living in a gated fortress.
- zach 15y agoThe thing that's fascinating about people with that much money is that they have a lot of freedom to express themselves within their lifestyle. Cars are a very particular expression of that. So Larry Ellison has a custom all-aluminum roadster, Steve had his German sedans, and ESRI's Jack Dangermond is noted for driving a Taurus wagon. But just having a Mercedes AMG isn't the same as leasing a new one every six months. But as has mentioned, he may have simply leased the same vehicle on successive six-month terms. That's a very good point and I'd suspect that was in fact the case. It's an even cleverer maneuver and simply sounds more like what Steve would do.
- davethenerd 15y agoI think it's beautiful. This let him buck authority and beat the system at the same time. There was a monetary cost involved (and it could be argued that the system beat him out of fresh registration fees every 6 months), but... still. You gotta admire the gusto. ;)
- gcb 15y agothat's the most moronic thing anyone can do. pay extra to the dealer. pay registration of a new car every 6mo. hassle of dealing with it. i imagine how many iphone prototypes the dealer found in the glovebox of hundreds of returned sl55 over that time.
- dangrossman 15y ago4 years / 6 months = 8. 8 cars, not hundreds.
- gcb 15y agoyou paid the 30% 'out of dealer' devalorization, of a SL55 AMG, plus leasing profits which shouldn't have been easy for this kind of arrangement, times 9, to have 4 years of car without plates. do that math for that, smart guy, and i dare you to disagree it was moronic.
- liber8er 15y agoApproaching 4 years of driving with no plates on the same car here in California. Just leave the paper dealer plate(the one with the dealership name/logo on it) on the car. Cops wont ever pull you over for lack of plates, even if youre missing the front plate as well, as I am.
- gcb 15y agodid that too because DMV was loosing my papers for a while. drove almost one year without plates. no one ever complained. I had 'dealer' plates on both ends. otoh, a friend got a ticket for missing front plates.
- liber8er 15y agoThey won't pull you over if they see the dealer plate on the back though. I had a cop coming towards me, flip a U when he saw no front plate, see my dealer plate, flip another U and go on his way. This was after about 2 years of driving with that dealer plate, mind you. If you get stopped for something else, you'll get ticketed. It's a fix-it ticket though and costs around $25 and two minutes to get signed off.
- lanstein 15y agoYou must not live in SF then. After four fix-it tickets for no front plate, I caved.
- there 15y agoin chicago the meter maids are strict about no front license plate, so when i moved here i quickly got a ticket for it (which was $50, i think). i had gone 6 years with no front plate and didn't want to put one on. i had a personalized license plate on the back that i no longer cared about and i discovered that when i told the dmv that i lost the front plate (which was true, since the car had no front plate for 6 years outside of chicago) they gave me a temporary plate while the replacements were being made, which cost me all of about $10. the temporary plate expired in 6 months, so for 6 months i was able to avoid having a front plate. if i had kept the car for longer, i would have just told them the plates never came in the mail or something, paid the small replacement fee again, and gotten another 6 month temporary plate.
- ck2 15y agoNow explain why he liked to use handicap spots and find the DMV loophole for that. Or how he seeded Apple by selling something that would have landed him in federal prison today.
- felipemnoa 15y ago>>handicap spots Cancer could qualify him for that, maybe?
- falling 15y agoYour first claim is false.
- ck2 15y agoThis was before he had cancer and his own biography author made the claim.
- Natsu 15y agohttp://www.switched.com/2008/08/26/steve-jobs-is-alive-and-parking-in-handicap-spots/ http://www.switched.com/2008/08/26/steve-jobs-is-alive-and-p... [2008] Note that he might have had or qualified for a handicapped sticker, given how sick the cancer made him, though no one appears to know for sure. And I could definitely see him not wanting to put the sticker on his car if he had one. It appears to be the same car, though, right down to the missing license plate.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- cpeterso 15y agoTourette syndrome? (cf. Curb Your Enthusiasm)
- mahyarm 15y agoDid he use them everywhere or just at apple? He's rich enough to pay the fine once in a while when it happened if it was outside of apple too.
- mikeryan 15y agoCan anyone explain the advantage to driving without plates? It seems that being the Mercedes AMG would be just as easy to identify as the Mercedes with the APPLE1 plate.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoIf you are Steve you probably ask yourself "Why must I do this?" about 20 times per day.
- oneplusone 15y agoMinimalism. A reflection of his design philosophy.
- lanstein 15y agoThough strangely, he left the dealer plate on.
- lanstein 15y agoOut here? No way, you probably see at least five of those a day.
- liber8er 15y agoAnonymity. Silver SL's, even AMGs, aren't exactly uncommon in the area. Plus, you don't have to worry about red light cameras.
- icebraining 15y agoAnonymity? How many plate-less Mercedes are there in CA?
- hugh3 15y agoIf I'd had a silver SL55 I would have de-plated it, in the hope that Steve Jobs would have got blamed for everything I did.
- 15y ago
- andrewacove 15y agoI guess he'd have a good answer for the "Tell us about a time you hacked a (non-computer) system to your advantage" question on the YC application.
- icebraining 15y agoBefore that, he and Woz used the Blue box[1] the latter had built to make free calls. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box
- philwelch 15y agoI assure you, the telephone network back then was still a computer system.
- sev 15y agoIt states: The permit the dealer provides for display on the passenger side of the front window is valid until the plates and stickers are received by the customer, or for six months from the sale date, whichever comes first. Assuming he received them a month after purchase, since another clause states that one would no more than 45 days after purchase, how is that a loophole?
- X-Istence 15y agoHe leased his cars ... didn't own them.
- ugh 15y agoHis decision to go with the lettering on the car (“SL 55 AMG”) seems much stranger to me. At least if you buy the (much cheaper) C-Class you can actually decide whether you want lettering or not. (I don’t have a car and don’t want one but my dad recently asked me whether he should go with or without the lettering. I told him to go without, that seems much classier and better looking to me.)
- nlh 15y agoThat's actually not an option from Mercedes. All MBs come with the lettering -- however the lettering is attached basically with a dab of (pretty strong) glue, and to remove the badges requires nothing more than a concentrated heat source, a pair of pliers, and some solvent to clean the residue. It's more of a "mod" (albeit a simple one) than an option - and most people actually consider _removing_ the lettering to be quite tacky. Why? Because the people who often remove the badges are the ones with the less-expensive model cars (i.e. the SL550 vs. the SL55) and who want others to think they have the more expensive version :)
- ugh 15y agoMy parents bought the car from an official German MB dealer and it was an option.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Eyalush 15y agoI don't really consider this a DMV loophole. It's just constantly driving a new car. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to "uncover" this loophole, it just takes a wealthy individual to be able to afford the the lease premium to do this if they are motivated enough.
- mattheww 15y agoI'm told by a family friend who was Jobs' neighbor that his license plates were stolen regularly by his fans. This was probably how he chose to solve that problem.
- avree 15y agoFor what it's worth, I lived near Jobs' growing up, and not once heard of his plates (or anyone in that neighborhood's) plates getting stolen.
- jellicle 15y agoExcept there's no loophole. Registering the vehicle at purchase (or at beginning of lease) is required. Cal DMV will then send you plates. At which time your paper stickers expire. Besides, his vehicle wasn't displaying the temporary plates either. Look, MacObserver and all the rest of you fanboys: Steve Jobs just decided to disobey the law. There's no loophole. There's just a guy who thought the lines of his car were spoiled by license plates and who decided that, fuck it, he's a billionaire and the laws didn't apply to him. Jobs was an asshole and a scofflaw. He'll be remembered for doing great things with Apple. Quit trying to whitewash the rest of his life. By the time you people get done with him, his Wikipedia page will talk about how he spent four hours every day feeding puppies and orphans. Sheesh. Knock it off already.
- rtrunck 15y agoDisobeying vehicle registration laws does not equal being an asshole. I doubt anyone actually makes it through a day without breaking at least one law. Quit being an asshole yourself and at least provide a legitimate reason why he was an asshole.
- 1gor 15y agoprovide a legitimate reason why he was an asshole. Judging by his fanboys' comments, this should be guilt by association.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- burgerbrain 15y agoYou think downvotes for calling somebody an asshole is HN going "down the hill"? Really?
- damncabbage 15y agoParking in disabled spaces[1][2]. :) [1] http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Handicapped.txt [2] http://www.cultofmac.com/2613/steve-jobs-still-parking-in-handicapped-spaces-the-pictures/
- jamesbkel 15y agoI'm curious to see what options he chose for the interior such as the stitching and leather.
- ticktock 15y agoPeople in California make no sense to me - why go through the trouble if you've got that much money - just get a Chauffeur! We do it Right Coast!