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Oh, 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 li
by gcv 15y ago
Oh, 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.
- atmega10 15y agoWhat is an "insanely fast borderline-supercar" good for when all it does is get you to the next red light faster (unless you take it to the track)? I'm genuinely curious. I found that when I drive (relatively relaxed) I tend to be waiting at the next intersection next to the guy who changed lanes multiple times and raced around others. I'd rather spend my money to upgrade to a bigger boat.
- jarek 15y agoWhat is a bigger boat good for? I'm not a vehicle guy, but a lot of people have different fascinations.
- atmega10 15y agoI guess what I don't understand is the point of buying a faster (and I guess in this case insanely fast) car when you're still bound by the rules of the road. Speed limits are everywhere, and even if you accelerate much quicker than me, more often than not we're just going to meet again at the next red light.
- ticktock 15y agoIt's an ego thing - something Steve had no lack of.
- jarek 15y agoWell, meh. It's not my cup of tea, but some people enjoy a powerful, well-handling car, and don't always drive in the city. There are a couple of nice routes around the periphery of the Bay Area where good engine, handling, and brakes can put a smile on car people's faces. The pass between San Mateo and Half Moon Bay comes to mind. I don't know if one needs an AMG for that, but I can't quite picture Steve Jobs in a Miata.
- lanstein 15y agoThere is no such thing as a $120k used Mercedes, outside of a 65 or a Maybach. As for the boring and reasonable bit, search 'G550'.
- hugh3 15y agoA six-month-old, slightly used SL-class AMG? $120K is about right. They're $140K new.
- Steko 15y agoHonestly "most people" don't have to care. Only a few people need to care enough to affect prices for something with such a limited supply. It's not hard to find pre-owned by celebrity car sales fetching a premium. For all we know though there's some loophole that lets the dealer resell the exact same car to Jobs every 6 months which somehow keeps it under the no-plate period.
- nlh 15y agoI'm in the luxury car industry and I can say that the "celebrity-owned" cars fetch approximately $0 in premium in the marketplace. Dealers will certainly (try to) use that fact in their marketing, but the cars are such commodities anyway (particularly the SL55, of which there are TONS out there) that nobody, in the end, really cares who owned the car as long as it looks and runs like it's supposed to.
- larrys 15y ago"there's some loophole that lets the dealer resell" Exactly. The way the law was written, the exact wording, it would never be expected that someone would not want to do something like put on a license plate and go to the added expense that Jobs did. The law probably reads "x" time period from the date of title. Even if that time period was only 30 days there is nothing to prevent someone from selling the car to their wife, buying it back, and re-titling. And a transfer to a family member in many states including California is exempt from sales/use tax: http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/brochures/howto/htvr1.htm http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/brochures/howto/htvr1.htm
- Steko 15y agoThanks both to you and sibling for info. I think he prolly was buying the same car repeatedly because it's said he drove 5k miles a year and his car has ~30k miles on it.
- zach 15y agoI'm not upset about it or concerned with the financial arrangements, I'm just kind of amazed by the concept. On top of the self-expression of never having license plates, he got one of the finest cars in the world delivered to his driveway, brand new, twice a year. I'm guessing not only did he never have car trouble, he never needed to take it in for maintenance either. That's hard to beat as far as perks of being a really rich guy go. Not my personal taste, but I can't deny its appeal.
- nlh 15y agoDon't overly idolize the concept. The SL55 is, relatively-speaking, a fairly modest car (brand new, the SL55 was a bit over $100k vs. the SL65, which looked the same but had a bigger motor and was almost _double_ the price). Among car nerds, Jobs' choice of the 55 model showed a lot of restraint. It's a nice car, but far from one of the finest cars in the world. And lastly, I'd bet that he didn't actually get a brand new one every six months -- leasing companies generally don't do that without requiring a massive chunk of money up front (i.e. $20k each time), and given the restraint he showed with the car selection, I doubt he'd be so, well, inefficient. It's MUCH more likely, as another commenter suggested, that the actual loophole they used was for him to "sell" the car back to the leasing company and immediately re-lease it every six months.
- blhack 15y ago>The SL55 is, relatively-speaking, a fairly modest car [..] a bit over $100k Are you out of your fucking mind? $100,000 is a fairly modest car? That's as much as a lot of us make in two years.