The BMW Z8 Steve Jobs owned is going up for sale
You can own the same BMW Z8 convertible the late, iconic entrepreneur and Apple CEO Steve Jobs owned.
It will come at a price, though. Jobs' wheels are expected to go for between $300,000 and $400,000. The BMW will go up for auction on Dec. 6 in New York City. The sale will be held by RM Sotheby's, a specialist car collection auction house, at Sotheby's headquarters in Manhattan.
Jobs, who was famously obsessed with making technology products beautiful and intuitive, unsurprisingly bought a famously elegant convertible.
"Widely considered by many to be one of the most attractive, yet innovative cars of the 2000s, it quickly became a bona-fide modern collectable," Sotheby's says of the BMW Z8.
Jobs liked German manufacturing and design — he also owned a Mercedes-Benz SLs and BMW motorcycles, according to Sotheby's.
The BMW Z8 Jobs owned is silver, "Titanium," with a black leather interior. It has 15,200 miles on it. It comes with a BMW-branded Motorola flip-phone built in, because back in 2000, that was the technology of the day. "Interestingly enough, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Jobs was known to have hated the Motorola phone," Sotheby's says.
BMW designed the Z8 convertible in the 1990s and it went into production in the early 2000s. The particular car owned by Jobs was produced on April 1, 2000 and delivered to Jobs that October 6, according to Sotheby's.
The car comes with sales invoices and California car registration proving Jobs was the first owner.
Jobs was not the only owner of the car. Jobs had the BMW Z8 for three years. He sold it to an owner in Los Angeles in 2003. That owner sold it to a tech executive in San Francisco in 2004. And then, missing the car, the second owner bought the silver convertible back in April 2006.
The fact that Jobs owned this BMW Z8 is pushing the price up. But generally, the BMW Z8 model has, even without the cachet of being owned by the famed Apple executive, increased in price, according to Autotrader, an online resource for buying and selling cars.
"The BMW Z8 is worth a ton of money. While other early-2000s BMW models have depreciated quickly, like the used vehicles they are, the Z8 hasn't. In fact, it's done the opposite. The Z8 is a 14-year-old BMW that has gained in value," writes Autotrader's Doug DeMuro.
When the BMW Z8 came out it cost $129,000 and now the convertibles regularly go for more than $200,000, says DeMuro.
"So how did the Z8 do so well on the used market? One reason is, of course, its beautiful styling," says DeMuro. "Effectively a modern take on the gorgeous BMW 507, the Z8 is arguably the most beautiful car of the last 20 years — a vehicle that dabbles in 'retro,' and dabbles in 'futuristic,' and somehow manages to look good doing both."
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