I 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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
I don't know if one needs an AMG for that, but I can't quite picture Steve Jobs in a Miata.