The Real Reason Why Steve Jobs Bought Identical Porsches Every Six Months

And he bought the finest over the years. Now legend has it that he bought a new Porsche, identical to the one he already owned, every time a scratch showed up on his car. But the reason behind changing cars every six months is one that only a few know.

The founder of Apple bought a black convertible Porsche 911 every six months for decades. People around him thought that he changed cars every time a scratch showed on the body of the one he was driving at that moment. But this could not be further from the truth.

In fact, the reason why Jobs kept changing Porsches was that he hated license plates and did not want any such plate anywhere near his car. Back then, California allowed drivers not to use license plates for the first six months of ownership. Jobs made a deal to lease a new car every 180 days, so he did not need to put a license plate on it.

Jon Callas, computer security expert and software engineer for Apple, confirmed the story in an interview with ITWire back in 2011, just months before Jobs passed away.

Back then, it was rumored that Steve Jobs had made a deal with the Department for Motor Vehicles (DMV) to get a bar code on his car instead of a license plate. But the story has not been confirmed and all cars back then featured such bar codes.

He would not gift his used Porsche to his daughter
For years, though, even those who were close to him thought it was the scratches. He was indeed rich enough to change cars for that reason as well.

Steve Job's daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, tells the story about her father changing Porsche cars every few months in her memoirs "Small Fry," depicting him as a man who was not exactly generous. She, too, thought it was all about the scratches and was hoping to get one of the Porsches her father was trading in.

But when she asked, "Can I have it when you're done?" her father had quite an aggressive reply. "Absolutely not. You're not getting anything," he told her, Lisa wrote in her book. Instead, he would gift a Porsche to salesman Craig Elliot for selling more Macintosh units than everyone else in the United States.

Later on, he switched from the Porsche 911 to the Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG and he did just the same with the model: he changed the car every six months, always buying the exact same model in the exact same color just to drive without plates.

A sports car enthusiast, Jobs also drove a BMW Z8. The model sold for #329,500 at an auction in October 2017.